“The pace of contraction has really picked up,” said Julia Coronado, a senior economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York. The labor market “is in a severe deterioration phase. Job cuts are across the board.”
The Labor Department’s report is due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Payroll estimates of the 73 economists surveyed ranged from losses of 220,000 to 470,000. The jobless rate last month probably rose from 6.5 percent in October.
The 11th consecutive drop in payrolls would follow a 240,000 decline in October and bring the number of jobs eliminated so far this year to more than 1.5 million. Factories probably accounted for about a third of the decline in jobs last month, according to the survey median.
Jobs, Recession
The employment slump was a key factor in determining the start of the recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of U.S. business cycles, announced this week that a contraction began in December 2007, the month payrolls peaked.
At 12 months, the recession is already the longest since the 16-month slump that ended in November 1982.
Other reports have indicated the labor market is deteriorating. The Institute for Supply Management’s gauge of employment at service industries dropped last month to the lowest level since records began in 1997. Its index for manufacturing jobs fell to a 17-year low.
The declines prompted John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, to raise his forecast for the November payroll loss to 450,000.
First-time jobless claims, a government measure of firings, have held over half a million in each of the last four weeks, the longest stretch since 1982.
More Pessimism
As economic data for last month deteriorated, economists at Goldman Group Inc. were among those marking down estimates for gross domestic product and boosting forecasts for unemployment. The economy will shrink at a 5 percent annual rate this quarter and decline at a 3 percent pace in the first three months of 2009, Goldman’s chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius said in a note.
Goldman forecasts the jobless rate will climb to 9 percent by late 2009....
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