US employers cut a surprisingly large 80,000 jobs in March, the biggest decline in employment in five years, a government report showed Friday. The mounting job losses swelled the national unemployment rate to 5.1 percent last month compared with 4.8 percent in February. The March nonfarm job losses marked the sharpest monthly decline since March 2003 and the start of the Iraq war, while the unemployment rate leapt to its highest level since September 2005, just after Hurricane Katrina struck the US Gulf coast. “Some people were questioning whether we're in a recession. Now they can't. We're clearly and positively in a recession,” said Robert MacIntosh, a chief economist at Eaton Vance Corp. Most economists had expected payrolls to decline by 50,000 posts in March. It was the third straight month of job losses. The Labor Department survey on nonfarm payrolls also revised February and January's job losses to 76,000 positions, down from prior estimates of 63,000 and 22,000, respectively. A total of 232,000 positions were cut by US employers during the first three months of 2008 amid mounting economic uncertainty. The subdued employment reading appeared to support the view of a growing number of economists that the world's largest economy is in a recession after economic growth slowed dramatically to a 0.6 percent annualized pace during the fourth quarter of 2007. Economists said the latest employment report would pressure the Federal Reserve to continue slashing interest rates to fire up economic momentum. The Fed has aggressivly cut its key short-term federal funds rate by three percentage points since September to 2.25 percent amid a lingering housing slump and a related credit crunch. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Wednesday that it was possible the economy might slip into a recession, but he said any downturn would likely be mild. A recession is typically defined as two straight quarters of declining economic activity. The last time the United States endured a recession was 2001. Stephen Gallagher, an economist at Societe Generale, expects the Fed to cut its fed funds rate by between 25 and 50 basis points at a late April policy meeting, in part because of the worsening job picture. Mounting employment losses are likely to add to rising economic angst. __
