NEW YORK (CNN Money.com) -- Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January, taking the unemployment rate up to 7.6%,according to the latest government reading on the nation's battered labor market.

The latest job loss is the worst since December1974, and brings job losses to 1.8 million in just the last three months, or half of the 3.6 million jobs that have been lost since the beginning of 2008.

The loss since November is the biggest 3-month drop since immediately after the end of World War II, when the defense industry was shutting down for conversion to civilian production.

January's job loss was also worse than the forecast of a loss of 540,000 jobs from economists surveyed by Briefing.com

The rise in the unemployment rate also was worse than the 7.5% rate economists expected. The unemployment rate is now at its highest level since September, 1992.

As bad as the unemployment rate was, it only tells part of the story for people struggling to find jobs.  Friday's report also showed that 2.6 million people have now been out of work for more than six months, the most long-term unemployed since1983.

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