Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Employers throttled back on layoffs in July, cutting 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent. It was a better than expected showing that offered a strong signal that the recession is finally ending.
The Labor Department's report was better than many analysts were expecting. They were forecasting job losses to slow to around 320,000 and the unemployment rate to tick up to 9.6 percent, from 9.5 percent in June.
If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 percent.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)