The number of Americans out of work rose at its fastest pace for more than six years, official data published on Thursday showed.

Averaged over a monthly period, around 445,750 Americans lost their jobs last week, marking the highest level since December 2001.

While the number of unemployed actually fell last week by 13,000 to 432,000, compared with the week before, Wall Street prefers to smooth out the statistics by calculating how many people lost their jobs over a four week period.

At the same time, Washington's Labour Department said that over the same four week period, 3.33 million Americans were already claiming unemployment benefits - the highest number since November 2003.

Almost 6 per cent of the American workforce is currently without a job. Most worryingly, companies which are laying off workers are no longer just in the fields of financial services and construction - the two industries worst hit by the credit crisis and the US housing slump. A variety of industries such as car manufacturing, retail, and textiles, have been affected, indicating that the turmoil on Wall Street has spread across the slowing US economy as a whole.

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