US employers cut payrolls by a bigger-than-expected 80,000 in March, adding more evidence that a housing downturn and credit crisis has pushed the economy into a recession.
It was the third monthly decline in a row and the biggest in five years, according to the Labor Department.
Adding to the bleak picture, the department revised the first two months of the year's job losses to a total of 152,000 from a previous estimate of 85,000.
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Economists polled ahead of the report forecast a decline of 60,000 in non-farm payrolls and a rise in the unemployment rate to 5 percent.
...bad reading comprehension in the morning. I thought that paragraph was saying the unemployment rate was 5%. It isn't, it's 5.1%.