Jobless rates edges up

Kind of a disappointing report - U.S. unemployment increased to 9.5 percent in June from 9.4 percent the month earlier, while 467,000 jobs were cut, far higher than what many economists had expected (May's loss was only 322,000 jobs). From the NYT:

The number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks has more than tripled since the recession began, to 4.4 million. The median time people go without a job has increased to more than four months, from slightly more than two months at the outset of the recession in December 2007. "We have never seen a duration of that magnitude," Lynn Reaser, vice president for the National Association for Business Economics, said. "There are a lot of ramifications. A lot of these people become discouraged, and they drop out of the work force. It affects their spending, their whole psychological frame of mind."

Remember, though, that most of the forecasts had unemployment remaining high well into next year. In L.A., that means a double-digit jobless rate.