WASHINGTON (AP) — Trying to survive a deepening recession, employers are cutting their work forces to the bone, leaving more Americans unemployed and with dim prospects of finding a new job any time soon.

The Labor Department releases a report today expected to show the employment market turned worse in December, capping a year when job losses were logged every month.

With employers throttling back hiring, the unemployment rate is expected to jump from 6.7 percent in November to 7 percent in December, according to economists’ forecasts. If they are right, that would mark the highest jobless rate in 15-1/2 years.

Nervous employers probably axed another 550,000 jobs last month, economists forecast. That would bring the net number of jobs lost for all of 2008 to 2.46 million. Some however, think the number of jobs cut last month will be higher — 600,000 or 700,000.

If the conservative 2.4 million estimate of net payroll reductions for 2008 proves correct, it would mark the first annual job loss since the previous recession in 2001. It also would be the worst year of job losses since 1945, when employers slashed nearly 2.8 million jobs, though the number of jobs in the U.S. has more than tripled since then.