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June Unemployment Rate Highest in 9 Years


By LEIGH STROPE, AP Labor Writer

WASHINGTON - The nation's unemployment rate shot up to 6.4 percent in June, the highest in more than nine years, in an economic slump that has cost nearly a million jobs in the last three months.

Businesses slashed 30,000 jobs just last month, with cuts heavily concentrated on factory assembly lines, the Labor Department (news - web sites) reported Thursday.

Last month's 6.4 percent rate — the highest since the aftershocks of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks — was up 0.3 percentage point from May. That surprised analysts who had predicted a slight rise to 6.2 percent. The last time the rate was higher was in April 1994.

While recent economic indicators point to an economy struggling toward recovery, the latest report demonstrated that America's job market was still very much in a state of recession last month.