WASHINGTON – The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent last month as non-farm employment fell for the eighth straight month, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. “Non-farm payroll employment continued to trend down,” Keith Hall, commissioner of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, told Congress today. “Since peaking in December, payroll employment has declined by 605,000, for an average monthly job loss of 76,000.”

Hall’s address before the Joint Economic Committee accompanied the release of the bureau’s monthly Employment Situation report.

In August, payrolls nationwide shrank by 84,000 compared with July.

Analysts had expected a smaller loss – projecting that a 75,000-job decline would follow the originally estimated July loss of 51,000 – based on the median estimate from a Bloomberg News survey of 76 economists. (Their estimates of the August job loss ranged from 40,000 to 150,000.)

The survey also predicted an August jobless rate of 5.7 percent, which would have matched July’s four-year high. Instead, the unemployment rate nationwide rose 0.4 percentage points to the highest level in five years, matching the 6.1-percent level of September 2003.

“Large job losses occurred in manufacturing, particularly motor vehicles and parts, and in employment services,” Hall said. Those declines more than offset month-over-month employment gains in mining and health care.

“Housing-related manufacturers and automakers continued to be among the hardest hit,” Hall said. “Wood-product and furniture manufacturers each lost 7,000 jobs over the month. Motor-vehicle and parts makers cut 39,000 jobs. In the retail sector, employment at auto and parts dealers was down by 14,000.

“The employment-services industry, which includes temporary help agencies, shed 53,000 jobs in August. “Thus far in 2008, employment services has lost 284,000 jobs.

“Construction job losses in July and August averaged 14,000, compared with an average monthly loss of 45,000 during the first half of 2008,” the commissioner said.

On the bright side, he said, “health care added 27,000 jobs in August, about in line with its average growth in the prior 12 months (31,000). Mining employment rose by 12,000 in August, with increases in all the component industries.”

Meanwhile, average hourly earnings for private-sector production and non-supervisory workers rose to $18.14 – an increase of 7 cents per hour, or 0.4 percent, compared with July and 3.6 percent compared with August 2007 – exceeding analyst expectations in the Bloomberg survey. But that increase lagged consumer prices, which Hall said have risen 6.1 percent over the past 12 months.

Average weekly earnings rose $2.36 compared with July to an August level of $611.32, as the average work week held steady at the July level of 33.3 hours. For manufacturing production workers, “factory hours and overtime both declined by 0.1 hour,” the BLS commissioner said.

“Since April of this year, the jobless rate has increased by 1.1 percentage points,” Hall noted. “The number of unemployed persons increased to 9.4 million in August, up by 592,000 over the month and by 1.8 million since April.”

The number of long-term unemployed – people out of work for 27 weeks or more – “increased by 163,000 to 1.8 million,” Hall said, while the number out of work for less than 5 weeks increased by 400,000 compared with July.

Unlike earlier this summer – when the growth in unemployment was mostly among job-seekers ages 16 to 24 (READ MORE) – “in August, workers age 25 and over accounted for all of the increase in unemployment,” Hall said. The jobless rate among teenagers was “little changed” at 18.9 percent, the BLS said.

“Unemployment levels and rates rose over the month for most major demographic groups, with a particularly sharp increase in the rate for women age 20 and over,” to 5.3 percent, although it remained below the adult-male rate of 5.6 percent. Among major racial and ethnic groups, unemployment rose for blacks (to 10.6 percent), Hispanics (to 8.0 percent) and whites (to 5.4 percent), but not Asians (4.4 percent).

Education continued to play a strong role, with the jobless rate for workers with a bachelor’s or higher degree rising 0.3 percentage points in August to 2.7 percent while the jobless rate among people 25 and older who lack a high-school diploma rose 1.1 percentage points to 9.6 percent.

“We’re losing jobs in all kinds of industries now,” Roger Kaubarych, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview today. “This is the clearest recessionary signal we’ve seen.”

“This spike in unemployment is deeply disturbing,” U.S. Sen. Jack Reed said in a statement this afternoon, adding: “The Senate needs to work this month to pass additional economic legislation so we can strengthen the economy and provide relief to struggling families.”

Additional information, including the full Employment Situation Summary and the BLS Commissioner’s Statement on the Employment Situation release, is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics at www.bls.gov.