The Labor Department reported today that the economy has lost 93,000 jobs in August, while the unemployment rate dropped from 6.2% to 6.1%.

Economists had been looking for a slight gain to reverse the job loss trend.

Also, 44,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in August. In fact, manufacturing has lost 2,717,000 jobs since the peak in June 2000 — a 16% decline.

The economy last added jobs in January, since then, it has lost 595,000.