PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona's unemployment rate continues to grow as the construction-led downturn spreads throughout the economy, producing the highest percentage of year-to-year job losses in more than three decades, the state reported Thursday.

The Department of Commerce said the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent in November from 6.1 percent in October, and a department official said the rate likely will continue to rise well into 2009.

"These are some bad times," said Dennis Doby, Research Administration senior director.

The normal November addition of approximately 17,000 jobs as retailers prepare for the holiday buying season fell far short this year, with only 3,200 jobs being added.

Arizona's unemployment last hit 6.3 percent during the 2002 recession.

The November unemployment rate's increase of two-tenths of a percentage point mirrored a same-size increase that put the national rate for November at 6.7 percent. Arizona also had a two-tenths increase in October.

Arizona lost jobs in construction, natural resources and manufacturing. Gains were reported in trade, government, education, health services and leisure and hospitality. Within retail trade, jobs were gained in department and apparel stores but the reverse was true for trade related to housing and automobiles.

The department said the 83,100 nonfarm job losses in the 12 months since November 2007 represented a 3.1 percent decrease in employment, the largest percentage loss for a 12-month loss since 4.6 percent in June 1975.

"What we're seeing now is what was originally a construction-led decline - and it is still in good part a construction-led decline" - has spread through the rest of the economy, largely due to credit trouble, Doby said.

For example, the mining industry lost 500 jobs in November, Doby noted. "Mining was one of our stars," he said.

The November unemployment report was released a week after prominent Arizona economists told an economic outlook conference that the state's economy was in worse shape of any state in the West and continuing to deteriorate, with weak job growth and major overbuilding of homes.

Doby said the unemployment rate appears heading higher, probably to 7 percent in the next several months and possibly to 8 or 9 percent later if the national rate goes that high.

Still, compared with the double-digit rates that Arizona had during the 1975 and 1982 recessions, "we've got a long way to go before we hit the top," he said.

Because of work force expansion, the 30,000-plus initial claims submitted in both October and November for unemployment benefits would have to be double that level to reach the percentage peak of the 1982 recession and three times as much to match the 1975 recession's high, Doby said.

"When we turn the corner" largely depends on fuel prices and action by the federal government, Doby said. "With that uncertainty at the national level, both businesses and consumers seem to be holding off, waiting to see what's going to happen."

Doby said he was "optimistic" that the job losses would halt by the third quarter of 2009. "Next year is going to look good just in comparison," to 2008, he added.

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On the Net:

Commerce Department workplace data: http://www.workforce.az.gov/

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