The nation's December unemployment rate remained unchanged from November at 10 percent, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday, a sign that the hoped for turnaround in joblessness had not yet arrived.

All of the major stock indexes opened lower immediately after the report was issued but closed up on the day, with the Dow Jones industrial average gaining 11.22 points to close the week at 10,618.

Economists and federal officials had been hoping to see new life in the economy after November's report was later revised to say that there had been 4,000 jobs gained that month. But December disappointed with a net 85,000 jobs lost.

"Today's numbers underscore that we still have work to do before we can be sure that all Americans have access to good jobs," U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said.

The unemployment report received a much different reception last month. In December, President Barack Obama announced during a speech at Lehigh Carbon Community College near Allentown that he had been expecting November job losses of 115,000.

"This is the best jobs report that we've seen since 2007," the president said then. "I've got to admit, my chief economist, Christy Romer, she got about four hugs when she handed us the report."

But yesterday, instead of the modest gains in the payroll report for December that economists had predicted, there were large losses.

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PG graphic

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Monthly unemployment rate

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Christina Romer, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, called the employment report "a setback from November."

Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., noted that the unemployment rate remained at 10 percent because 661,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. If they had kept looking for jobs, the unemployment rate would have been 10.4 percent.

The unemployment rate is determined by a national survey. People who are not working and have actively looked for a job in the last month are considered unemployed. Those people who answer the survey that they are not working and have given up looking for a job are not counted among the unemployed.

In her analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Ms. Shierholz noted that according to federal numbers the labor force has decreased by 810,000 since the recession began in 2007 at a time when, due to population growth, it should have increased by 2.8 million. She said that means there are 3.1 million missing workers who should be in the labor force but are not counted as such. They are a group that, when the economy recovers, also will have to be absorbed into the work force.

Another indicator of the deep and sustained nature of the current recession is the statistic that 38.8 percent of the unemployed (6.1 million people) have been out of work for six months or more. At the same time, the number of the newly unemployed has dropped over the last year from 3.3 million in December 2008 to 2.9 million last month.

Another indicator that has stood out throughout the recession is the growing number of people who are working part-time because full-time work was not available and people who want a job but have given up looking for work because they couldn't find a job. When those two groups are combined with unemployed workers, they make up 17.3 percent of the work force.

The report was not greeted as unequivocally bad news. Ms. Romer said the fact that job losses are slowing signaled a stabilization of the labor market.

"As the president has said for a year, the road to recovery will not be a straight line," she said. "It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job creation."

That job creation may be coming, if the Society for Human Resource Management is right. Yesterday the society released it own report that said hiring managers expected that hiring will outpace layoffs in January.

inside

• Stocks gain as traders take jobs report in stride.

-- Business, Page A-13

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.