The US unemployment rate surged to 6% in April as Iraq war-shaken businesses axed jobs, according to the latest government figures. The jobless rate, up from 5.8% in March, was the highest so far this year.
US businesses cut 48,000 jobs in the month, roughly in line with expectations, bringing job losses in the past three months to 525,000, the Labour Department said.
Manufacturing workers were hardest hit, losing 95,000 jobs in April, particularly in factories making motor vehicles, fabricated metals and electronic equipment. Retailers trimmed staff by 10,000.
But government jobs swelled by 32,000, and jobs in the construction industry also expanded by 18,000.
A separate government survey found the number of unemployed people grew 341,000 to 8.79 million in April. The civilian labour force - those in a job or looking for one - rose by 680,000 to 146.47 million.
Aggregate time worked fell 0.7% in April to 146.6 hours and the average workweek declined by 18 minutes to 34 hours. Weekly earnings increased by 0.7% to $513.74 on average. In factories, the workweek declined by 18 minutes to 40.5 hours and overtime fell by six minutes to 3.9 hours.
Businesses had cut 124,000 jobs in March, revised data also showed.
Soaring demand for warplanes helped boost orders for goods from US factories by 2.2% to a near two-year high in March, separate figures showed. The increase, far steeper than had been expected by Wall Street, pushed factory orders up to nearly $330 billion, the highest level since May 2001, the Commerce Department said.
