INSTANT VIEW: Jobless rate highest in 4 yrs in July

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 5.7 percent in July, its highest in more than four years as employers cut payrolls for a seventh month in a row, though less severely than predicted, according to a government report in Friday.

KEY POINTS:

* The Labor Department said 51,000 non-farm jobs were eliminated in July, bringing losses for the year to 463,000.

* Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the 75,000 jobs to be cut last month but had forecast the unemployment rate would rise only to 5.6 percent.

* The unemployment rate in June was 5.5 percent.

* The department revised its estimates for job losses in each of May and June.

* It said 47,000 jobs were cut in May instead of 62,000 and 51,000 in June rather than 62,000 - a total 26,000 fewer jobs lost in the two months than previously thought.

COMMENTS:

CARL LANTZ, U.S. INTEREST RATE STRATEGIST, CREDIT SUISSE, NEW YORK:

"It looks like we have this continued pattern where more people are coming into the labor market looking for work.

"For any given household people who weren't at work before are now working to try to make up the gap in income, so you had a 213,000 rise in the labor force.

"It's a bit of a mixed bag. On the margin it's probably a little better than what the markets had feared going into it, but it's not a slam-dunk positive by any means.

"We're still in this limbo. The Fed can't ease, the Fed can't hike."

DOUG ROBERTS, CHIEF INVESTMENT STRATEGIST, CHANNEL CAPITAL RESEARCH, SHREWSBURY, NEW JERSEY: