The Young Turks

Jobs disappeared across a broad spectrum of professions, with the steepest losses coming in the manufacturing, construction and goods-producing industries.

The unemployment rate, after jumping to 5 percent in December, fell back slightly, to 4.9 percent.

"This is the clearest signal yet that the job market is either in or teetering on a recession," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

With the collapse of the housing market, trouble on Wall Street and the continuing fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis, many economists have pointed to the continued growth in the labor market as the final holdout in a sluggish economy.

But the employment report puts the job market in a startlingly different light. Economists had predicted a substantial gain in January payrolls, and early signs pointed to a relatively strong report. Instead, the government reported the first decline in jobs since August 2003.

"There's a race going on between an economy that's gathering weakness and aggressive monetary and fiscal policy," said Ethan Harris, chief United States economist at Lehman Brothers. "Whether we have a recession in the U.S. or not depends on which of these two forces moves quicker."

Mr. Harris noted that the employment data can be quite volatile from month to month. The last reported monthly decline, in August 2007, was later revised up to a 74,000 gain.