Richmond’s unemployed workers did the best they could to shake off yesterday’s bad news that the U.S. unemployment rate hit double digits. They got back to the main task: finding work. The nation’s jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent last month from 9.8 percent. The unemployment rate is the highest in 26½ years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported the number of people on employers’ payrolls fell by 190,000—more than economists, who just last week were hailing the end of the recession, had forecast.

The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983. Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs and employers cut a net total of 190,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department says.

Virginia’s unemployment rate bucked the national trend and fell last month, remaining well below the nation’s rate. The state’s unemployed accounted for 6.5 percent of the work force in August, down from 6.9 percent in July and 7.1 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday. The seasonally adjusted rate was still much higher than the 4.1 percent reported in August 2008.

For the first time since July 2007, Virginia’s month-over-month jobless rate has dropped. Between June and July, Virginia’s unemployment rate decreased 0.2 percentage point to 6.9 percent, the Labor Department said yesterday. While it may be a sign that the economy is recovering, discouraged workers also could be impacting the numbers, experts said.

Employers sharply scaled back layoffs in July, and the unemployment rate dipped for the first time in 15 months, sending a strong signal that the worst recession since World War II is finally ending.

More people in all 10 metropolitan areas in Virginia were unemployed in May than in April, according to a report on joblessness released yesterday. The jobless rate in the Richmond area rose to 8.1 percent in May from 7.5 percent in April, more than double what it was a year ago, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. Seven cities in Virginia, including Richmond, Hopewell, Petersburg and Williamsburg, had double-digit unemployment rates in May.

With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. But the pace of layoffs eased, with employers cutting 345,000 jobs, the fewest since September. The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department yesterday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on the country. It marked the fourth straight month that the pace of layoffs slowed.

Virginia’s jobless rate remained steady from March to April, but economists say it’s too early to celebrate the end of the recession. While the nation’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose 0.4 percentage points to 8.9 percent in April, Virginia’s stayed at 6.8 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Even though the unemployment rate was unchanged in Virginia, the underlying numbers show that the economy is still contracting,“ said Christine Chmura of Chmura Economics & Analytics in Richmond. “We still have 4,000 more people unemployed.“

Evidence is piling up that the worst part of the recession has ended. But that doesn’t mean the pain is over. A better-than-expected unemployment report yesterday—job losses in April declined to the lowest level in six months—capped a week of encouraging news, including firmer home sales, a revival in consumer spending and fresh optimism about the biggest U.S. banks.

The nation’s unemployment rate is the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated jobs in March.

As the state announced a 1 percentage-point jump yesterday in the Richmond region’s jobless rate to 7.9 percent, another major layoff began to hit the area. Wachovia Securities laid off 500 employees as the single biggest chunk of job losses from the ongoing merger with A.G. Edwards.

Virginia’s unemployment rate continued to rise in February, as did the jobless rate for the rest of the country, according to new figures released yesterday. As the recession deepened and layoffs continued, the jobless rate in the state jumped to 6.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in February from 6 percent in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

State unemployment rate jumps to 6.4% January reading up sharply but below U.S. figure; all 10 metro areas report increase Virginia’s unemployment rate spiked to 6.4 percent in January, a rate not seen here since June 1992. The increase from 5.1 percent in December comes after about 51,700 people lost jobs during the first month of the year, according to data released by the Virginia Employment Commission yesterday.