DRUDGE; LABOR DAY PRAY: UNEMPLOYMENT HITS 26-YEAR HIGH - Joe 'Idiot' Biden; 'Stimulus is working!' LOL...

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The pace of U.S. job losses slowed in August while the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high, signaling the recovery from recession will be slow to develop.

Employers cut payrolls by 216,000, fewer than forecast, after a 276,000 drop in July, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The jobless rate rose to 9.7 percent; the so- called underemployment rate -- which includes part-time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- reached a record 16.8 percent.

Today’s figures stoke concern that the recovery forecast to take hold in the second half of the year won’t prompt a turnaround in the job market until 2010. With the ranks of long- term unemployed nearing 5 million, workers are at risk of losing skills, making it even tougher for them to eventually find work.

“The economy is no longer detonating, but we are still losing jobs,” David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. “It’s going to be a very tough environment for the consumer.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed up 1.3 percent at 1,016.4. The yield on the benchmark 10-year note climbed to 3.44 percent at 4:32 p.m. in New York from 3.35 percent yesterday.

Geithner’s Judgment READ MORE...