Jobless rate up to 5.7 percent

WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate shot up to 5.7 percent in November as the job loss total for the past two months hit 800,000, the worst performance in more than two decades.

The Labor Department report Friday showed just how devastating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were on the labor market, prompting huge layoffs across a wide swath of the U.S. economy, with airlines and other travel-related industries particularly hard-hit.

The worse-than-expected numbers also dashed hopes raised by other reports that the recession, the country's first in 10 years, will end soon.

"The rumors of a recovery were premature," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's Co. in New York. "We are still in a recession and we will be for some months to come."

President Bush and other Republicans used the dismal report to try to increase pressure on Democrats in Congress to drop their objections to the administration's economic stimulus program, which Bush sent to Congress in October.

"Since then over three-quarters of a million Americans have lost their jobs," Bush said in a statement. "Today's important economic warnings demonstrate that America's workers have already waited too long."

But Democrats charged that the rising unemployment level underscored their demands that Bush's package needs to be changed to offer less in tax cuts for the wealthy and more in help for thousands of people now out of work.

Analysts said the impasse over the stimulus bill made it more likely that the Federal Reserve will cut rates an 11th time at their final meeting of the year next Tuesday.