The US job market suffered its heaviest blow in more than two decades in October, shedding a staggering 415,000 jobs as the full impact of the September 11th attacks struck an economy already in the early stages of recession.
The US labour department said today the national unemployment rate rose half a percentage point to 5.4 per cent last month from 4.9 per cent in September - the highest in nearly five years since a matching 5.4 per cent rate in December 1996.
October's job losses were the sharpest for any month since May 1980, when 464,000 were dropped from payrolls, and came on top of a revised 213,000-job decrease in September - even worse than the initially reported 199,000 job loss.
Last month's performance was far worse than the 289,000 jobs that Wall Street analysts had forecast would be lost and the unemployment rate was well above their 5.2 per cent estimate.
Earlier this week, the government reported the US gross domestic product, the broadest measure of total economic activity, shrank at a 0.4 per cent rate during the third quarter.