"I'm a little upset now, because I'm actually experiencing it," said Ramos, 44, of South Philadelphia.

On Aug. 29, Ramos became one of the 592,000 American workers added to the unemployment rolls last month, according to the dismal report from the U.S. Labor Department.

With 9.4 million now out of work, the unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent - a five-year high - while the economy shed 84,000 jobs in August, the eighth straight month of job losses and more than analysts expected.

The bad news comes on the heels of two intense weeks of political convention activity as presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama kick their campaigns into high gear.

Standing in front of the state employment office in South Philadelphia, Ramos said the economy was at the top on his list of issues.

"I'm looking to vote Democrat," he said, "because I think the Republican Party has taken care of their own and not the needy in America."

Every unemployed person who walked out of the CareerLink office around lunchtime yesterday blamed the Bush administration for the state of the economy - and most said they were leaning toward Obama.

That's not a surprise, political analysts said yesterday.

"Any bad economic news helps the Democrats," said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

"I think that the emotional punch of unemployment figures is much more powerful than any other economic data," he said.

Although there was hiring in health care and mining, jobs were lost in manufacturing, staffing, construction and retail, the report said.

"We're losing jobs in all kinds of industries now," said Roger Kubarych, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York. "This is the clearest recessionary signal we've seen."

Yesterday's report brings the total decline in payrolls so far this year to 605,000. The economy created 1.1 million jobs in 2007.

The percentage of the unemployed still without jobs after six months rose to 19.5 percent, up from 17.4 percent a year ago.

And while the official unemployment rate is 6.1 percent, up from 5.7 percent last month and 4.7 percent a year ago, a larger group is also up. This group, which includes workers too discouraged to look for jobs and people who are working part time because they can't find full-time positions, rose to 10.7 percent, up from 10.3 percent last month and 8.4 percent a year ago.

Also, the deteriorating labor market raises the likelihood the Federal Reserve will postpone any increase in interest rates until next year.

Yesterday's figures increase the risk that President Bush will become the first president since Richard Nixon to oversee two recessions.

However, the Bush administration expressed optimism.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez pointed to strong second-quarter growth to suggest that the economy was stronger than it appeared.