The U.S. lost more jobs than forecast in August and the unemployment rate climbed to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, signs that the economic slowdown is worsening two months before Americans elect their next president.

Payrolls fell by 84,000 in August, and revisions added 58,000 more job losses for the prior two months, the Labor Department said yesterday in Washington.

"It certainly increases the probability that we really are in a recession," William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "It is a weak number, including the revisions."