U.S. employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, according to a Labor Department report released on Thursday. News of the cuts brings the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. June's payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected. However, the rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4 percent in May was not as sharp as the expected 9.6 percent. Still, many economists predict the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year, and keep rising into next year, before falling back. In total, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June. “We were on the road of things getting less bad in the jobs market, and that has been temporarily waylaid. But this doesn't change my view that the recession will end later this year. We're probably two months away,” said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs.
