The number of Americans that filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits increased to as much as 407.000 in the last week of March, 38.000 more than a week before, as the US employers shed around 80.000 jobs in the entire month, figures from the US Department of Labor showed.

The decline is the third in only one month, showing further signs that the US economy is going through a deepening crisis, just a few days after the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that a recession could be possible.

The jobless rate rose at 5.1 percent in March, compared to February’s 4.8 percent, which represents the highest level since September 2005.

The new figures passed economists’ expectations, as they had been forecasting a 60.000 decline in jobs and an unemployment rate of 5 percent.

The Labor Department said that most jobs were lost in the construction and manufacturing sectors, given the fact that the housing slump caused a stoppage of building homes, even if job losses were spread across all sectors of the economy.

According to the most recent figures, during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, an average of 77.000 jobs were lost each month, while in the last half of 2007, 76.000 jobs were created monthly.

If analysts were until now disputing over whether the economy would enter a recession or not, after the release of the Labor Department’s report, they have pretty much the same opinion, that is that the United States had passed the tipping point towards the crisis.