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Employment figures updated after Katrina

A total of 68,000 Americans lost their jobs due to Hurricane Katrina and filed for unemployment benefits last week, pushing these applications up by the largest amount in nearly a decade. That figure exceeded the claims filed in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and analysts predicted that it would be revised even higher once states catch up with processing a flood of claims. But the U.S. economy was expanding at a pretty solid pace before Katrina hit, and this momentum may help keep the American economy from being pushed into a major downturn. Analysts have predicted that Katrina, the country`s worst natural disaster, will trim economic growth by as much as a full percentage point in the second half of this year and cost around 400,000 jobs. Just before the hurricane hit the U.S. government had announced that the jobless rate for the country had gone down.