598,000 Jobs Shed In Brutal January

Unemployment Hits 7.6% as Downturn Picks Up Steam.

Conditions for the nation's workers deteriorated last month at an unrelenting pace, new data showed yesterday, adding urgency to the Obama administration's calls for aggressive action to curb job losses and bolster the economy.The White House has been working on parallel tracks to arrest the economic free fall. While building support for a massive stimulus package, which cleared a crucial hurdle in the Senate last night, the administration has also been cobbling together a rescue plan for the financial system, which the Treasury Department is scheduled to unveil Monday.Both efforts are designed to improve the nation's employment outlook, by directly creating jobs in the case of stimulus and, in the case of the financial rescue, by steadying the banks that would ordinarily lend to employers seeking to expand.