The US unemployment rate has surged to its highest level in almost 16 years, according to a US government report.

A total of 2.6 million jobs were lost from the economy in 2008, the largest decline since 1945, the US Labour Department said on Friday.

The unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 per cent from 6.8 per cent in November, with 1.9 million jobs being lost in the last four months of last year.

The collapse of the US housing market and the resulting financial crisis have triggered what some say is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"This is a very dismal report. This paints a much worse picture in 2008 than we had thought," said Lindsey Piegza, a market analyst at FTN Financial in New York.

"This is one of most significant downward quarters for jobs in post World War history."

Stimulus plan

The number of unemployed rose to 11.1 million in December, the data showed.

The Labour Department also revised the number of job losses for the prior two months, with the October figure being changed to show a loss of 423,000 jobs from 320,000 and November a loss of 584,000 from 533,000.

The report, seen as perhaps the best indicator of economic momentum, "suggests that both the US economy and job market fell off a cliff" at the end of 2008, said Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial research firm.

Behravesh said he expected "the jobs hemorrhage to continue through much of 2009" at a heavy pace and to ease if a large economic stimulus package can be enacted quickly.

Barack Obama, the US president-elect, warned on Thursday that the struggling US economy could be in recession for years unless politicians agree a massive economic stimulus plan.

Obama, who takes office on January 20, has pledged to change US economic policy, and is set to introduce a new stimulus plan containing tax cuts and public spending that could total almost $800bn.