From the Kansas City Business Journal:
The United States lost 524,000 jobs in December compared with November, and the nation’s December unemployment rate was 7.2 percent, up from 6.8 percent the prior month and the first rate higher than 7 percent since 1993, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.
The nation lost 1.93 million jobs between August and December. The manufacturing sector had the biggest December job loss, at 149,000. For all of 2008, the sector lost 791,000 jobs, an average of 66,000 a month.
The nation also lost 101,000 construction jobs in December and 632,000 in all of 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
Employment in the retail trade sector declined on a seasonally adjusted basis, despite the holiday season. The sector had 66,600 fewer jobs in December than in November and lost 522,300 jobs for the year.
The only sectors to register increases between November and December were health care, which picked up 31,600 jobs nationally; educational services, up 7,000 jobs; and government, which added a total of 7,000 jobs at the federal, state and local levels.