WASHINGTON — The nation's unemployment rate climbed to a six-year high of 5.8 percent in December as businesses slashed payrolls for a fifth straight month. It was the longest stretch of job losses in a decade as the economy continued to falter in recession.

        The economy lost more jobs last year than in any other in the past two decades, but December's 124,000 job losses were sharply below the previous two months, the Labor Department reported Friday. That raised hopes that the economy could be stabilizing after the terrorist attacks.

        The unemployment report showed that businesses cut 1.08 million jobs from their payrolls in 2001 — the largest, single-year loss since 1982 when 2.16 million were cut as the country struggled through the steepest downturn since the Great Depression.

        Last year's was the first annual job loss since businesses trimmed 844,000 jobs in 1991, during the last recession.

        The 10-year-long economic expansion that followed — the longest stretch in U.S. history — pushed the jobless rate down to a 30-year low of 3.9 percent in October 2000.

        In 2001, the employment level peaked in March, the month that the National Bureau of Economic Research has ruled that the recession began.

        Since then, businesses have cut 1.4 million jobs, with 1.1 million of those coming in the last four months of the year as the slumping economy received a body blow from the terrorist attacks.

        The job market will be one of the last signs of recovery if, as analysts project, the nation emerges from recession sometime this year, probably by spring.

        Even after the recovery begins, the unemployment rate is expected to continue rising until businesses gain enough confidence to begin hiring back workers.

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