The bad economic news just keeps piling on.

New today is that employers cut payrolls by a more-than-expected 240,000 jobs in October, raising unemployment to 6.5% — its highest in more than 14 years.

In September, 284,000 jobs were cut – the most since November 2001. The Labor Department on Friday also revised August job cuts higher to 127,000 — meaning a total 179,000 more jobs were cut in August and September than previously thought.

"We have entered the phase of serious recession conditions. Unfortunately we will encounter more of this going forward," Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City Corp. in Cleveland, told Reuters. "This is going to increase the urgency for another stimulus package to staunch the slide."

Wall Street economists had expected about 200,000 jobs would be cut and that the unemployment rate would be 6.3%.

So far this year, 1.2 million U.S. jobs have been lost — 651,000 of them in the past three months alone. The manufacturing sector is hard hit – losing 90,000 positions last month. That came after 56,000 factory jobs lost in September. A Boeing strike was partly to blame.

USA Today notes that some of the biggest job cutters include:

• Construction companies - 49,000 workers
• Retailers - 38,100 workers
• Financial services firms - 24,000 workers.

On a positive note, local governments added 21,000 workers in October, while average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers rose four cents in October to $18.21.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. posted a $2.98 billion quarterly operating loss and shares in world No. 1 automaker Toyota Motor Corp. plunged on Friday after warning this year’s profits would hit a 13-year low. Guess sales of the popular Prius only helped so much.

Ford also said it would cut salaried expenses by another 10%, following on a program that cut such costs 15% earlier in 2008.

On top of this news, President-elect Obama is meeting with his economic transition team today and will give a press conference.

Sitting on the board of that transition team are some prominent women, including: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy; Classic Residence by Hyatt CEO Penny Pritzker; and former chairman of the National Economic Council under President Clinton, Laura Tyson.
Obama is calling on economic experts to discuss the first steps toward fixing the broken economy.

"We’re not starting from nowhere," said Lawrence Summers, a Treasury secretary under Clinton who is part of Obama’s economic team – not to mention, a top contender to be the next Treasury secretary – to NBC’s "Today" show.

"Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn’t been these last years.”