Dec. 6--The staggering loss of more than a half-million payroll jobs in November injected new urgency into calls for a federal stimulus to put Americans back to work.

The U.S. Department of Labor on Friday reported that employers slashed 533,000 payroll jobs last month, and the national unemployment rate jumped to 6.7 percent from 6.5 percent.

How bad was it?

It was the fifth-worst job-loss month since World War II, the highest one-month job loss number since December 1974, and a 15-year high in the jobless percentage.

"This is the big one ... the large-scale recession that we have feared could cripple an overleveraged U.S. economy," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

Many of the job losses were attributable to the ongoing credit and mortgage crisis. But economists were struck by the widespread nature of the cuts, which dug into every employment sector except health care and education.

To date, federal bailouts for the financial sector have not had much effect on employers. Even so, the calls for a bailout of the struggling auto industry gained traction in some quarters as manufacturing job-loss numbers mounted.

The labor report came as top executives from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler appeared again before Congress.

"For us to do nothing, to allow bankruptcies and failure in one or three of these companies in the midst of the worst credit crisis, and the worst unemployment situation, that we've had in 70 years would be a disaster," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, on Capitol Hill.

After a compromise, congressional Democrats and the White House neared an agreement Friday on about $15 billion in bailout loans for the beleaguered industry.

Since last December, which this week was designated the official beginning of the recession, the number of unemployed people looking for work has jumped by 2.7 million, to 10.3 million.

More than 1.25 million of the payroll job losses have occurred in the last three months, bringing net payroll losses to 1.9 million since the start of the recession.

Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, President Bush for the first time used the word "recession." He expressed concern about mounting job losses in the auto industry but worried about providing taxpayer-funded federal bailouts to auto manufacturers that might not survive.

President-elect Barack Obama also responded to the jobs report, issuing a statement that "there are no quick fixes to this crisis" but that the nation must move quickly to include job creation in a recovery plan.