The U.S. economy has unraveled at a breathtaking pace since the middle of last year.

Nearly 6 million private-sector jobs have vanished since June 2008, equaling a loss of 485,000 jobs per month. The national unemployment rate has skyrocketed nearly four points over the same span—from 5.6 percent at last year’s midpoint to 9.5 percent this year.

And there's no immediate relief in store. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Thursday that the jobless rate could be above 9 percent through the end of 2010, even if the economy resumes growth at a modest pace. And the Labor Department reported Thursday that first-time jobless claims for the week ended September 26 rose more than economists expected, a sign that companies are still cutting jobs. The news on Friday was even grimmer. The Labor Department issued an alarming September employment report, revealing that the economy lost a greater-than-expected 263,00 jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest level since 1983.

No section of the country has been immune to the recession’s ravages. But a few areas are still doing reasonably well, notably Texas, which includes four of America’s five hottest labor markets, according to a new bizjournals/Portfolio.com study. For complete results of the analysis, please see Brother, Can You Spare a Job?

Austin leads bizjournals’ latest employment ratings of the nation’s 100 biggest metropolitan areas. San Antonio ranks second, Houston fourth, and Dallas-Fort Worth fifth. Baton Rouge, Louisiana came in at No. 3.

Each of the four Texas markets has fewer private-sector jobs than a year ago. All 100 metros in the study group, in fact, have suffered employment declines since mid-2008. But the Texas numbers are surprisingly good when stacked against the rest of the country:

-- Five percent of the nation’s private-sector jobs have melted away since June 2008, but the collective decline for the Texas Four has been only half as bad, 2.6 percent. San Antonio has fared the best, losing just 0.9 percent of its jobs in the past year.

-- The long-range numbers remain impressive. The Texas markets, despite their recent losses, still have 589,500 more jobs than they did a half-decade ago. That works out to a five-year growth rate of 10.8 percent, compared to the national decline of 0.7 percent over the same period.

-- Dallas-Fort Worth has the worst unemployment rate among the Texas Four, 8.2 percent as of mid-2009. That’s still nearly a point and a half better than the U.S. jobless rate of 9.5 percent.

Bizjournals created a nine-part formula to analyze employment trends in the nation’s 100 largest labor markets. The formula used midyear U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the 2004 to 2009 period, including unemployment rates and trends and raw and percentage changes in private-sector employment.