The U.S. unemployment rate soared to 6.4 percent in June 2003, according to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It's the highest unemployment rate since April 1994.

According to CBS MarketWatch, "The report was much worse than expected. Wall Street economists had forecast that payrolls would fall about 3,000 and that the jobless rate would rise to 6.2 percent from 6.1 percent in May."

To the contrary, the June unemployment rate rose to 6.4 from 6.1 percent, its highest in nine years, while a whopping 360,000 additional workers lost their jobs.

• A total of 9.4 million workers were unemployed in June, the most since December 1992.
• 2 million unemployed persons had been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, an increase of 410,000 since the beginning of this year.
• Since March 2003, unemployment has increased by 913,000.

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