Employment continued to decline in the month of February, helping to drive the nation’s unemployment rate to its highest level in over 25 years. The drop in jobs marked the fourteenth consecutive month of job losses.

The Labor Department released a report on Friday showing that non-farm payroll employment fell by 651,000 jobs in February, with the decrease coming in roughly in line with economist estimates of a decrease of 650,000 jobs.

The continued decrease in jobs in February followed revised decreases of 655,000 jobs in January and 681,000 jobs in December.

Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial said, “Despite some commentators hope that a big job loss would signal capitulation and the bottom in the recession, there is nothing in this report to indicate improvement in the economy.”

“At best, the good news is that job losses are no longer accelerating,” Low added.

With employment continuing to fall, the unemployment rate jumped to 8.1 percent in February from 7.6 percent in January. The increase drove the unemployment rate to its highest level since coming in at 8.3 percent in December of 1983.

However, it is worth noting that the unemployment rate remains well below the highs of the early 1980’s, when it rose as high as 10.8 percent. Nonetheless, economists expect the unemployment rate to continue to rise for much of the rest of this year.

The continued weakness in employment reflected decreases in jobs in both the goods-producing sector and the service-providing sector. While the goods-producing sector lost 276,000 jobs, the service-providing sector lost 375,000 jobs.

Continued decreases in manufacturing and construction jobs contributed to the decrease in employment in the goods-producing sector, while the drop in jobs in the service-providing sector was due in large part to a decrease of 180,000 professional and business services jobs.

At the same time, the report showed an increase of 26,000 education and health services jobs as well as an increase of 9,000 government jobs.

The Labor Department added that average hourly earnings increased by $0.03 or 0.2 percent in February following an increase of $0.04 or 0.2 percent in January.

The continued decrease in employment is likely to have a negative impact on consumer spending, as consumers are less likely to make discretionary purchases if they are worried about losing their jobs. Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of overall economic activity.