Report: U.S. job losses could top 3 million by mid-2009

A new report from a business research group says the country's labor market is likely to go from bad to worse.

The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index, which combines a number of readings on jobs and unemployment, fell to 102.9 in November, down 1.6 percent from October’s revised figure of 104.5.

The index is down 13 percent from a year ago.

“Thus far the U.S. economy has lost 1.9 million jobs and the declines in the (index) suggest job losses could very well surpass 3 million by mid 2009,” Gad Levanon, senior economist at the New York-based Conference Board, said in a release.

The index includes data such as the percentage of respondents who say that jobs are hard to get, the number of people who file for unemployment insurance for the first time and the percentage of firms with positions they are not able to fill, among other employment data.

The report comes on the heels of Friday’s government report that showed that the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs in November — the largest monthly decline since December 1974. That brought the year’s total job losses to 1.9 million.