The US economy shed another 467,000 jobs last month, signalling aggressive government stimulus measures are failing to unshackle the labour force from the grips of the recession, official figures showed on Thursday.

The result was worse than economists predicted and pushed the unemployment rate from 9.4 per cent to 9.5 per cent, slightly better than expected but still a 26-year high. Thursday’s figure shows further erosion from the previous month’s decline of a revised 322,000 drop and knocked wind from the notion that the pace of job losses might be slowing.

“If you were banking on the US driving a vigorous recovery, think again,” said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “The employment report can largely be taken at face value, and the face value story is a labour market that is not improving nearly as rapidly as the May data suggested.”