Health-care employers continue to add jobs during the recession, but workers in most other sectors of the economy are suffering as the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said today.

Employers cut 263,000 jobs, with most of the pain felt in construction, manufacturing, government and retail trade.

Job losses have averaged 307,000 a month since May, with payroll employment declining for 21 consecutive months and claiming 7.2 million jobs. Monthly job losses averaged 645,000 from November 2008 to April.

According to the BLS, the number of long-term unemployed increased as did the number of people who are working part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time employment.

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest number among records dating from 1994, The Washington Post reported.

In all, slightly more than 15 million were out of work last month.

Wall Street economists expected 180,000 job losses last month, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

“It’s a little bleak,” Marissa Di Natale, senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com, told The New York Times. “We’re not going to see job growth until the second half of next year. And even when it does start to grow, it’s going to be slow.”