COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Oil prices were sedentary Friday after this week's giant sell-off, despite a government report showing the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high last month and predictions from an international energy agency that put the price of crude at $200 per barrel by 2030.Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose 27 to settle at $61.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But the contract dropped below $60 in overnight electronic trading for the first time 19 months.
The U.S. Labor Department said Friday that the country's unemployment rate hit 6.5 percent in October as another 240,000 jobs were cut, matching the worst jobless rate since March 1994. So far this year, a staggering 1.2 million jobs in the U.S. have disappeared.
The job losses are yet another sign that the country is in a recession and that consumers and businesses will cut back on energy use.
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