The unemployment rate continued its steady upward creep to 9.5 percent, a 26-year high.

Included in today's statistics from the U.S. Labor Department was Stacy Fleming, a senior staffing consultant at Rohm & Haas Co., of Philadelphia. He lost his job Tuesday.

Fleming, a casualty of Dow Chemical Co.'s acquisition of Rohm, left work in the morning Tuesday and by late afternoon was attending a session by the Philadelphia Human Resource Planning Society on "Job Search in a Recession."

"My boxes are still in the car," said Fleming, of Montgomery Township, who himself has laid off about 30 or 40 people over the course of his career in human resources.

"You have to make sure everyone leaves with dignity," he said.

All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June - more than twice as many as at the start of the recession in December 2007.

Adding in employees forced to work part time, those too discouraged to look, and those who want a job but have not looked hard lately, the unemployment rate rose to 16.5 percent.

The average length of unemployment was up to 24.5 weeks, with 29 percent unemployed more than 27 weeks.

Particularly hard hit were teenagers, with 1.6 million young people ages 16 to 19 looking for work. That brings their unemployment rate to 24 percent, up from 18.8 percent a year ago. For young African Americans, the unemployment rate was 37.9 percent in June.

"While teenagers comprise only 4 percent of the workforce, they made up over 22 percent of the increase in unemployment in June," said Joel Naroff, the Bucks County-based chief economist with TD Bank N.A.

The unemployment rate among slightly older workers, those ages 20 to 24, is 15.2 percent and includes recent college graduates as well as people such as Daniel Quinn, 20, of Philadelphia's Mount Airy neighborhood.

"Every day in June I went around with resumes and no luck. I went to retail stores, restaurants, pretty much every place in Plymouth Meeting mall, Willow Grove mall, nothing," said Quinn, a communications major at Temple University.

The report revised May and April statistics. Layoffs in May turned out to be smaller, 322,000 vs. the 345,000 first reported. But job cuts in April were a bit deeper, 519,000 vs. 504,000.

With joblessness rising, President Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about unemployment and conceded that too many families are worried about "whether they will be next."

The report coincided with the weekly tally of newly laid-off workers filing for unemployment insurance. The number dropped last week, the government said, a sign job cuts are easing.

The Labor Department said initial jobless benefit claims fell 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 614,000.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, dropped to 615,250, the lowest in almost four months. The number of continuing claims for unemployment insurance dropped 53,000, to 6.7 million.

Consumers and businesses have sharply cut back spending in response to the bursting of the housing bubble and the financial crisis, sending the economy into the longest recession since World War II.

To cope, some companies have cut hours. The average workweek now runs 33 hours, the lowest since 1964.

Companies, trying to reduce costs, have cut a net total of 6.5 million jobs since the downturn began.

The cuts came in a wide variety of sectors. Construction lost 79,000 jobs in June, and it has yet to see an increase in hiring from the federal stimulus plan. Manufacturing continued its decline, with 26,500 jobs in motor-vehicle manufacturing among the 136,000 gone in June.

Employment dropped 21,000 in retailing, with car and auto-parts dealers taking half that hit.

About 118,000 jobs were lost in business and professional services, with 62,000 jobs lost in administrative and support services, including 37,600 in temporary jobs lost. Hiring in education and health services rose 34,000.

Contact staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen at 215-854-2769 or jvonbergen@phillynews.com.

This article includes information from the Associated Press.