Worst Job Loss In 5 Years

Payrolls Sink 159,000

The U.S. economy lost 159,000 jobs in September, the worst since March 2003, the Labor Department reported Friday. The economy has now lost 760,000 jobs this year, further evidence that the economy was in a recession even before the financial market crisis of the past few weeks."Whatever the government might or might not do to try to bail out the financial system, a consumer-led recession is upon us, and it promises to be a serious one," wrote Josh Shapiro, economist for MFR Inc. The unemployment rate was steady at 6.1% as expected, with 9.5 million Americans looking for work, the government said. An alternative measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers rose from 10.7% to 11%, the highest since April 1994