Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2% to 7.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor reported recently. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months. In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.

Both the number of unemployed persons (11.6 million) and the unemployment rate (7.6%) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 4.1 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.7 percentage points.

The unemployment rate continued to trend upward in January for adult men (7.6%), adult women (6.2%), whites (6.9%), blacks (12.6%), and Hispanics (9.7%). The jobless rate for teenagers was unchanged at 20.8%. The unemployment rate for Asians was 6.2% in January, not seasonally adjusted.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs increased to 7.0 million in January. This measure has grown by 3.2 million during the last 12 months.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.6 million in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed was up by 1.3 million. The number of persons unemployed less than 5 weeks rose to 3.7 million in January.