The US unemployment rate hit an all time high in 26 years at 10.2%, as many employers are still cutting down jobs in hopes of cutting down costs as they continually traverse the business waters in this global recession. Official figures that came out last September 4, 2009 showed that many industries are still keen on cutting down jobs, with:

• The construction industry letting go of 65,000 employees;
• The manufacturing sector some 63,000;
• Financial let go around 28,000;
• 22,000 for the professional and business services sectors; government jobs at 18,000; and
• The retail industry cutting down 9,600 jobs for the month of August.

There were bright spots in this hike in unemployment, though, as health care and educational services added 52,000 employees in their workforce.

This rate rose from 9.4% of the previous month, though the job loss figure was the smallest seen in a year. This hike in the unemployment rate has exceeded analysts’ forecasts of 9.5% proving how fickle still the economy is at present. At 216,000, this figure is still slightly lower than what many analysts have expected.

Though the rates are still very high, many say that the recession is on its tail-end and the economy as a whole is starting to recover from the global recession that started in December of 2007. Despite this improvement, analysts are still expecting the unemployment rate to remain high, peaking at 10% in the first quarter of 2010.

Nigel Gault, chief US economist at HIS Global Insight, says that this rise in unemployment is not at all discouraging. He states that the unemployment rate decline of July came in as a very pleasant surprise and was too good to be true. However, it is still too early for the unemployment rates to be going down and Gault believes there will still be job losses.

Despite this, he offers that what is really worth taking note here is the fact that the rate in which the jobs are going down is steadily slowing.

The stimulus package implemented by the Obama administration is still hitting its stride; government officials say that many more improvements with regards to the whole economic picture are expected to come in the future months.