A Blue Christmas: Another 533,000 jobs vanished in November

U.S. payroll fell by 533,000 in November, the Labor Department reported on Dec. 5. That monthly job loss is the worst in 34 years, since December 1974. A total of 1.9 million jobs have been lost, since the recession began 11 months ago.

The unemployment rate crept up to 6.7%, the highest jobless rate in the past 15 year, since October 1993. A broader government measure of joblessness, which includes people who want a job but have given up looking for work, rose to 12.5%.