Unemployment numbers are in, and they are grim:

524,000 jobs were lost, and unemployment jumped from 6.8% to 7.2%, the highest number in 16 years.

Note also that the 2.6 Million job loss in 2008 is the largest since 1945.

Also note that the U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, jumped from 12.6% in November to 13.5% in December. It was 8.7% in December, 2007.

Also note that this number is worse than it looks, because the prior months have been revised down:

The change in total nonfarm employment for October was revised from -320,000 to -423,000, and the change for November was revised from -533,000 to -584,000. Monthly revisions result from additional sample reports and the monthly recalculation of seasonal factors.

The same report also notes the explosion of involuntary part timers:

In December, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (some- times referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued to increase, reaching 8.0 million. The number of such workers rose by 3.4 million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full- time jobs.

According this pretty picture, that number is worse than it was in the Reagan Recession of the early 1980s. (H/T Calculated Risk for the graph pr0n)