This morning’s release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the February employment report showed that the unemployment rate increased to 8.1% in February, the highest rate in over twenty-five years, and that the economy shed 651,000 payroll jobs, for a total of 4.4 million lost so far in this recession, including 3.3 million lost in the last six months alone. “Job loss continues at a stunning pace — we haven’t seen employment fall off a cliff like this in over thirty years,” said EPI experts Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz. Read more in today’s Jobs Picture.