A report by the US Department of Labor released Thursday said that job losses grew in June this year thus pushing up the unemployment rate to 9.5%, the highest in 26 years.

painting a dismal picture of the economy, the Labor Department report said that payrolls in the US shrank by 467,000 in June, much more than had been predicted by economic analysts. Currently there were 131.7 million jobs in the country which is even lesser than what had been in May 2000 when official statistics reported 131.9 million jobs. Thus the United States now has fewer jobs than it did nine years ago even though its work force has grown larger by 12.5 million people.

Economic experts figure that this is the first time in the post-War period that recession has eaten away all the jobs created in the last business cycle which is calculated from the start of the last recession in March 2001 to the beginning of the current recession in December 2008. While the previous business cycle had led to the creation of 5.7 million jobs, official data shows that the current recession has wiped out as many as 6.5 million jobs.

Thursday’s Labor Department report slammed the brakes on hopes for a quick economic recovery and indicated that a turnaround may take longer than previously expected.