Business

Unemployment line continues to grow

By JEANNINE AVERSA/AP Economics Writer

Saturday, November 8, 2008 11:06 PM CST

WASHINGTON - A quarter of a million pink slips, just before the holidays.

Assembly line workers, construction crews, sales clerks, hotel employees, mortgage brokers and temps. All hard hit last month, the government said Friday.

‘‘Main Street knew well before the Beltway people that there are problems out there,'' said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight.

The nation's ranks of unemployed zoomed past 10 million, the most in a quarter-century, and new job losses totaled 240,000. And politicians and economists agreed on a painful bottom line: It's only going to get worse.

The jobless rate soared to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, the government said Friday, up from 6.1 percent just a month earlier. And there was more grim news from U.S. automakers: Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. each reported big losses and figured to be announcing even more job cuts before long.

Barack Obama, in his first news conference as president-elect, said the nation was facing the economic challenge of a lifetime but expressed confidence he could deal with it.

‘‘Immediately after I become president, I'm going to confront this economic crisis head on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity,'' he said after meeting with economic advisers in Chicago. ‘‘I'm confident a new president can have an enormous impact.''