WASHINGTON — Unemployment rose to 6.1% in August, the highest infour years, as businesses cut 84,000 jobs, the Department of Laborreported today.

July's numbers represented a 0.4% increase over July and a 1.4%rise from August 2007. It was the eighth consecutive month of joblosses.

The number of people employed unemployed rose by 592,000.

Wage growth also remained sluggish, Average hourly earnings grew7 cents, or 0.04%. That compares to an increase of 6 cents inJuly.

As in July, employment increased in education, government healthcare and mining while it decreased in manufacturing, construction,and professional and business services. Construction job lossesdeclined at a slower rate–14,000 in both July and August–comparedto an average monthly loss of 45,000 during the first half of2008.

The number of people who worked part time out ofnecessity–because they could not find full-time–remained unchangedat 5.7 million, and has grown by 1.2 million in the last year.

This was the second piece of bad news on the job front thisweek. On Thursday, the department reported that weekly joblessclaims rose 15,000 to 444,000 last week.