More than a half-million jobs melted away as winter took hold in December - 524,000 in all, the government estimated.

The recession, which just entered its second year, is already the longest in a quarter-century. The fact that the country is battling a housing collapse, a lockup in lending and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s makes the downturn especially dangerous.

All the problems have forced consumers and companies alike to retrench, feeding into a vicious cycle that Washington policymakers are finding difficult to break.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 143 points to end the week down nearly 5 percent, the worst week since November.

The Labor Department's December unemployment report showed widespread damage across U.S. industries and workers - hitting blue- collar and white-collar workers, people without high school diplomas and those with college degrees.

And the new year got off to a rough start with a flurry of big corporate layoffs. Yesterday, airplane maker Boeing Co. said it plans to cut about 4,500 jobs this year, and uniform maker G&K Services Inc. is eliminating 460 jobs.

Henrico County-based Genworth Financial Inc. laid off 1,000 people this week, including 400 in the Richmond area and 230 people in Lynchburg.

The Genworth layoffs come on top off big cuts at LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc. and smaller layoffs across the region.

ClearPoint Financial Solutions, a nonprofit credit-counseling firm based in Henrico, is seeing the fallout.

Unemployed people visiting ClearPoint in December for credit counseling increased 140 percent from the same period a year earlier, spokesman and certified financial specialist Bruce McClary said. Last month, the counseling firm had 188 sessions with people who were having difficulty managing their debt because they were unemployed. A year earlier, they saw 79 people.

"Usually it's the deadest of dead months," McClary said. "But not so this year."

Workers who kept their jobs are putting in fewer hours. Employers also are forcing some staff to go part-time. The average work week in December fell to 33.3 hours, the lowest in records dating to 1964 - and a sign of more job reductions in the months ahead because businesses tend to cut hours before eliminating positions.

Economists predict a net total of 1.5 million to 2 million or more jobs will vanish in 2009, and the unemployment rate could hit 10 percent.

All told, 11.1 million people were unemployed in December. An additional 8 million people were working part time - a category that includes those who would like to work full time. That was up sharply from 7.3 million in November.

If those part-time employees, discouraged workers and others are factored in, the unemployment rate would have been much higher - 13.5 percent in December. That was the highest for that broader category in records going back to 1994.

The unemployment rate zoomed from 6.8 percent in November to 7.2 percent last month, the highest since January 1993.

The nation's jobless rate averaged 5.8 percent for the year - up sharply from 4.6 percent in 2007 and the highest since 2003.

Employment last month shrank in virtually every part of the economy. The few fields spared included education, health care and government.

Workers with jobs saw modest wage gains. Average hourly earnings rose to $18.36 in December, a 3.7 percent increase for the year. But high prices for energy and food through much of 2008 made people feel that their paychecks weren't stretching that far.

- Staff writer Emily C. Dooley contributed to this report.

Originally published by The Associated Press.

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