In Washington, the outgoing administration of President Bush pledged to work quickly and closely with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to contain the economic damage.
"A methodical and orderly transition is in the best interests of the financial markets and Treasury is committed to making sure that the incoming team can hit the ground running in January," Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson said in a statement.
Obama plans to convene a meeting in Chicago today with his economic advisors against a backdrop of rising unemployment.
The Labor Department said Thursday that the ranks of long-term unemployed workers drawing weekly benefits rose to 3.84 million, the highest since 1983.
Today the government will report the unemployment rate for October. The rate was 6.1% in September -- reasonably low by historical standards, but still a significant increase over a year earlier, when the unemployment rate was 4.7%. Each 1% of unemployment represents about 1.5 million workers.
More companies are also announcing large-scale layoffs, including El Segundo-based toy maker Mattel Inc., which said Thursday that it would cut its payroll by 1,000 jobs worldwide.
"Job loss is very pervasive right now across industries," said Jared Bernstein, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute. "It's hard to find industries that are creating any jobs, other than healthcare and government."
Although the consensus forecast was for a payroll decline of 200,000, rumors abounded on Wall Street that today's report could be 250,000 or more. That helped send the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 450 points. The blue-chip indicator has fallen almost 930 points, or 9.7%, since Tuesday's election.
"We're now realizing that the unemployment rate is not going to stop at 7%. It's now going above 8%," said Tom Wirth, senior investment officer at Chemung Canal Trust Co. in Elmira, N.Y. "We're now realizing the recession isn't going to last just six to nine months. The market is now perceiving that it's going to be longer-lasting."
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Maura.reynolds@latimes.com
andrea.chang@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Walter Hamilton in New York and Ronald D. White in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
