542,000 jobs lost in December 2008

01/10/09

We've gone "over the abyss." That's how one local economist described the latest national unemployment report, which showed a whopping 524,000 jobs were lost last month, pushing the jobless rate up to 7.2 percent in December from a revised 6.8 percent in November. For the year, 2.6 million jobs were lost, the most since 1945, the Labor Department reported Friday. Some 1.9 million of the jobs lost came in the last four months of 2008.