Across the nation last month 539,000 more workers lost their jobs, pushing the country’s unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, the highest level in 25 years, the US Labor Department reported today.
 
Even so, the number of jobs lost in April hit a six-month low and was less bleak than the 699,000 workers laid off in March. It didn’t hurt that the federal government hired 72,000 people, many of them to prepare for the 2010 Census. In the private sector, 72 percent of employers reported job losses in April. Still, that was better than almost 80 percent that slashed jobs in March.

"Although we have a long way to go before we can put this recession behind us, the gears of our economic engine do seem to be slowly turning once again," President Barack Obama said today, responding to the employment report.
 
Wachovia economists predicted that unemployment will continue to rise for the next 12 months, peaking at 10.8 percent next April.
 
"We are moving in the right direction, but the recession is not over, and even when it's over that's not an end of the tough times," Wachovia senior economist Mark Vitner told CNN.

The longest recession since World War II continued to break unemployment records.

Of the 13.7 million unemployed, 27 percent have been jobless six months or longer, the highest percentage of long-term unemployed in the 61 years of records.

In the highest reading since 1994, almost one out of six adults is either unemployed, working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, or so disheartened that they have given up looking for work.  If the part-time workers and those who have given up had been counted, the national unemployment rate would have been 15.8 percent in April.

Compiled from BankOwnedBids.com news wire services