HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's job losses reached an 18-year high last year and the statewide unemployment rate soared to its highest level since March 1994, state officials said Thursday.

In 2008, Pennsylvania lost 76,000 jobs — more than 1 percent of the state's work force at the beginning of the year. The proportion of people looking for work rose to 6.7 percent in December from 4.4 percent a year earlier.

The year's job losses accelerated in the last five months, and things don't appear to be improving.

Gov. Ed Rendell announced Thursday that a severe budget crunch will force state government to lay off workers later this year, and employers such as trucking company YRC Worldwide Inc. and electronics giant Sony Corp. recently announced that layoffs are planned later this year.

At Lancaster-based High Steel Structures Inc., the steel fabricator is seeing fewer orders for girders in building construction and cash-strapped states committing to fewer bridge projects.

For now, the company's 650 workers in Lancaster and Williamsport are staying busy on bridge projects already in the pipeline and executives hope that a proposed economic stimulus package from the federal government will pump money into more bridge projects.

"We know that if the stimulus package is delayed significantly or is not very robust, we would expect to have a problem later in 2009," said High Steel's president, Jeffrey Sterner.

The state now has fewer nonfarm jobs than it did in February 2006.