Professional and business services slashed 118,000 jobs, more than double the 48,000 cut in May. Manufacturers cut 136,000, down from 156,000. Construction companies got rid of 79,000 jobs, up from 48,000 the previous month. Retailers eliminated 21,000, up from 17,600. Financial activities cut 27,000, following 30,000 in May. The government cut 52,000 jobs, up from 10,000 the previous month. Leisure and hospitality cut 18,000 jobs, erasing a gain of the same size in May.

One of the few industries adding jobs: education and health services, which added 34,000 positions last month and 47,000 in May.

The 473,000 drop in the ADP Employer Services gauge followed a revised reduction of 485,000 workers in May that was smaller than previously estimated.

Job losses may mount as the bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC ripple through manufacturing. Increased firings threaten to further restrain consumer spending at a time when the world’s largest economy is showing signs of stabilizing.

"This is a weak number," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, said on a conference call with reporters. "It's a pretty clear indication that, while we’re not shedding jobs as rapidly as the first part of the year, the labor market is still in a state of decline."

The jobless rate zoomed to 6.5 percent in October from 6.1 percent in September, matching the rate in March 1994.

Unemployment has now surpassed the high seen after the last recession in 2001. The jobless rate peaked at 6.3 percent in June 2003.

October's decline marked the 10th straight month of payroll reductions, and government revisions showed that job losses in August and September turned out to be much deeper. Employers cut 127,000 positions in August, compared with 73,000 previously reported. A whopping 284,000 jobs were axed in September, compared with the 159,000 jobs first reported.

So far this year, a staggering 1.2 million jobs have disappeared. Over half of the decrease occurred in the past three months alone.

Planned layoffs at U.S. companies jumped 26 percent in July from June, depicting further deterioration in the labor market, a report showed on Monday.

Planned layoffs at U.S. companies totaled 103,312 in July, compared with June's 81,755, employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc said.

Announced job cuts at U.S. companies last month were the second highest total so far in 2008, more than double the 42,897 a year earlier, the report said.

The moves, which include selling at least $2 billion in assets and borrowing as much as $3 billion, are expected to raise about $15 billion by the end of 2009, the chief executive Rick Wagoner said.

Mr. Wagoner said the automaker would stop providing health care coverage to salaried retirees at age 65, offer buyout and early retirement packages to reduce its salaried work force and freeze base pay for salaried employees through 2009.

In addition, G.M. executives will no longer receive discretionary cash bonuses.

"These are tough but necessary actions," Mr. Wagoner said, "and these, along with current cash and available credit lines will provide us with ample liquidity through 2009 even under conservative U.S. industry sales assumptions."

The U.S. financial industry has been shedding jobs at a record clip, and some analysts predict the pace will only accelerate over the next year-and-a-half as banks cut costs in the face of the housing market slump and the weak economy.

Analysts at the financial research firm Celent LLC said in a report Tuesday that it expects the U.S. commercial banking industry - essentially, all companies that lend or collect deposits - to lose 200,000 of its 2 million jobs over the next 12 to 18 months.

An annual loss of 200,000 jobs at the nation's commercial banks would be an unprecedented number.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 69,000 in the week ended Jan. 26, reaching 375,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It marked the highest level since early October -- and the biggest weekly jump since September 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Before this sharp rise, jobless claims had fallen by a net of 51,000 since late December, confounding economists who had expected claims to gradually rise as the nation's economy slowed.

Analysts had been expecting an increase, but nothing nearly as large as last week's gain: The consensus forecast as compiled by MarketWatch had called for claims to rise to about 320,000.

Vancouver-based studios aren't commenting on the strike, which began last week, but veteran publicist Bill Vigars is calling the situation a crisis for B.C. productions.

He says one show, Bionic Woman, starring Michelle Ryan, shut down last Friday, more than a month early.

A source close to the Vancouver production of Battlestar Galactica says that show stops filming tomorrow, although it was supposed to continue shooting until next March.

Vigars estimates another four shows are expected to follow suit, costing at least 150 direct jobs per show, as well as jobs in related industries such as catering or trucking.

B.C. film commissioner Susan Croome says different shows have different numbers of scripts ready to shoot but insists no series in the province has reached a point of desperation, yet.

Since the middle of last year, a downturn in the U.S. housing market has taken its toll on a wide group of people and companies, clobbering homebuilders, condo flippers, borrowers with weak credit, lenders who oversold loans, and just about anyone with a home for sale.

Now the housing slump is hitting yet another target: housing-related jobs, a list that includes everyone from the people who build and sell houses to makers of appliances and furnishings.

That's a sharp contrast to the height of the housing boom in 2005-06, when the industry was responsible for creating some 25,000 to 50,000 new jobs every month, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys.com.

"In the recent months it's been laying off workers at a pace of 25,000 to 50,000 per month," he said. "And I think the next couple of quarters we'll start seeing job losses of between 50,000 and 75,000 per month. ... I think the housing market is going down a whole other notch."

Motorola (MOT) CEO Ed Zander said Friday the cell-phone maker will cut 3,500 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, as it moves to improve operating costs after a disappointing fourth quarter.

Zander, speaking to analysts at a meeting in New York, said the move will save the company about $400 million over two years. The cuts from Motorola's workforce of about 70,000 are to be spread across the company globally and completed in the first half of 2007.

Ontario's largest ski resort has laid off 1,300 workers after closing down its ski operations in the middle of the winter season for the first time in the resort's 65-year history.

"We're trying to make the best of things so that guests who still come to Blue will have a good time, but it's pretty tense," said Kelly O'Neil, a spokeswoman at Blue Mountain Resort, yesterday. Officials said they had no choice after a run of unseasonably warm weather that has some wondering if winter will appear this year at all.

In Toronto, yesterday's high hit a record 11C, smashing the previous Jan. 5 high of 10.1C set in 1997.

Mind you, that's still got some way to go before breaking the record for January's hottest day – 17.6C – set Jan. 13, 2005.

Yesterday's record, which was set around 7 a.m., came on the heels of the warmest January evening in 167 years.

Pfizer Inc. said Tuesday it will cut its U.S. sales force by 20 percent, or 2,200 people, as part of a cost-cutting program to transform the company into a more nimble organization as it struggles with sluggish sales.

The drug company has 11,000 sales representatives, and the cuts will be made by the end of the year, according to company spokesman Paul Fitzhenry. He couldn't say how much the cuts would save the company or if it would take any kind of an earnings charge because of the move.

In October, Pfizer said it would slash costs beyond the program announced last year, designed to cut $4 billion in expenses by 2008.

"The hundreds of Republican staffers - not to mention more than a few Members -who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market," Kate Ackley writes for Roll Call.

"While GOP aides are flooding the town with their resumes, it's now plugged-in Democratic aides whom companies and firms really have an eye for," the article continues.

The head of a lobbying firm that currently employs only Republicans tells the Capitol Hill newspaper, "It's going to be more of a buyer's market for Republican staffers and a seller's market for the Democratic staffers."

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters received an e-mail Tuesday morning telling them they were being dismissed immediately.

"The work force reduction notification is currently in progress," the notice stated. "Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

Company officials had told employees in a series of meetings that layoff notices would be delivered electronically, spokeswoman Kay Jackson said. She said employees were invited to ask questions before Tuesday's notification on a company intranet site.

Management experts expressed surprise at RadioShack's use of electronic notification instead of face-to-face meetings with supervisors.

Derrick D'Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the area of New Orleans, Metairie and Kenner was 4.9 percent in July, Hopkins said based on his calculations. The jobless rate there could easily climb to 25 percent, he estimated.

In another storm-slammed area of Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July was 5.7 percent, Hopkins said. That jobless rate could rise to around 20 percent or higher, he added.

"It's a pretty sizable impact. Commerce has come to a standstill in those counties that were hit," Hopkins said.