The U.S. unemployment rate is increasing rapidly. With 598,000 jobs lost in January, the current U.S. unemployment rate is at 7.6%, a level worst than most economic analysts forecasted.

In 2008 the job loss was even bigger with numerous corporations announcing mass layoffs after mass layoffs. According to the latest data from the Labor Department, as much as 597,000 jobs were lost in November last year, and about 577,000 in December. The report showed that, since the recession hit the United States in 2007, as much as 3.6 million jobs were lost, half of them in the last three months that were mentioned above.

The climb of the unemployment rate was steep, from 4.9% at the beginning of the recession to 7.6%.

This is the highest unemployment rate since 1993 when the rate also hit the 7.6% level in September.

“Businesses are panicked and fighting for survival and slashing their payrolls,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, for The New York Times. “I think we’re trapped in a very adverse, self-reinforcing cycle.”

But as Murphy said: “Smile…tomorrow will be worse.”

Most analysts expect more layoffs and implicitly a higher unemployment rate. Most forecasts point to a staggering 9% rate.

Businesses from each industries slashed payrolls, but some industries lost more jobs than others. The manufacturers eliminated 207,000 jobs, the construction companies lost 111,000 jobs, while retailers slashed 45,000 jobs during what it was their worse shopping season in years.

Meanwhile, the worker’s wages surprisingly remained pretty much unchanged. Hour earnings climbed 5 cents to $18.46, while average weekly earnings climbed $1.67 to $614.72.

However, despite some minuscule exceptions like the worker’s wages, all fact point to an economy that has turned into a vicious circle in which consumer demand, falling business investment, rising unemployment and mounting losses in the banking system are determining one another.