The U.S. unemployment rate reached a 25-year high in March, when 663,000 people lost their jobs, the U.S. Labor Department said today. The jobless rate rose to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in February. Overall, the economy has shed 5.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

The report showed that employers are cutting jobs at an increasing pace, with 3.3 million jobs eliminated in the last five months.

Job losses last month cut across manufacturing, construction and service industries, with education and health care showing some gains.

“The staggering job loss figures in March show that there is a long way to go before we see a recovery in America,” Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said in a prepared statement. “Lawmakers would be well advised to ignore the daily ebbs and flows of the equity markets and focus instead on plans for long-term economic growth and job creation.”

Manufacturers cut 161,000 jobs last month.

Economists told Reuters that the economy’s downward momentum was slowing, with unemployment being a lagging indicator that tends to peak well after a recession ends.

“The report does not contradict the growing notion that the economy is finding a bottom. Employment will not turn on a dime and certainly there’s no sign of strength, but at least it’s not getting worse and worse and worse,” said Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics in New York.

The Labor Department report also that the number of people unemployed for at least 27 weeks increased to 3.2 million. Another 2.1 million out-of-work people were not included in the March report because they had not searched for work during the four weeks of the current survey. The number represents an increase of 754,000 from a year earlier.