(Updated, 9:45 a.m.)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy lost 247,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate declined for the first time since April 2008, the U.S. Labor Department said this morning in a signal that the job market may finally be showing some signs of recovery.
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The latest round of job losses pushed the national unemployment rate down slightly to 9.4 percent, below the May rate of 9.5 percent but still the highest level in a quarter-century, the department said.
The rate fell because 400,000 Americans left the work force, with the share of adults holding a job falling to 59.4 percent in July from 59.5 percent in June, The New York Times reported.
U.S. employers have eliminated roughly 6.7 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the most of any downturn since the Great Depression. Monthly job losses peaked in January when 741,000 positions were cut, the largest monthly total since 1949.
The total number of jobs lost was 25 percent below the median forecast of economists polled by Bloomberg News, who expected employment to have fallen by 328,000 in July, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.6 percent. Most economists have been predicting the rate would reach 10 percent by the end of this year.
The unemployment rate in Rhode Island stood at 12.4 percent in June, the most recent month for which figures are available. Economists have said the state’s jobless rate could continue to rise into next year before a turnaround begins.
“The pace of job declines that we experienced in the last several months certainly was unsustainable and it looks like now the tide is turning,” Carl Riccadonna, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, told Bloomberg earlier this week.
Christina Romer, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned in a speech yesterday that the jobless rate is likely to keep going up despite increasing signs that the economic downturn may have bottomed out.
“The bottom line is that we are no doubt in for more turbulent times,” she said. Her comments followed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s warning last weekend that the unemployment rate might not peak until the second half of next year.
