Baghdad, Iraq ? Workers know a trip to the square could mean death, and still they go.

Every day, laborers crowd downtown Tayaran Square, the scene of nine bombings in the past three years, according to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. But with unemployment as high as 60 percent, men survive on the jobs they find here – jobs that pay an average $10 a day.

They faced their latest challenge Tuesday when attackers staged a suicide attack that left at least 76 people dead and more than 200 injured, the Interior Ministry reported. The nation’s leaders condemned the attack and promised to investigate, but workers complain that the government offers little relief from a cycle of poverty and violence that is pushing them toward extremism.

Interior Ministry Chief of Operations Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said the bombing was retaliation for raids this week by ministry investigators who killed 17 insurgents and detained 32 others. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is Shiite, called the attack a “horrible massacre” and promised a thorough investigation.

Workers at Tayaran are poor, mostly Shiite Muslims. Some are professionals, college graduates who lost their jobs and businesses as Iraq’s economy faltered the past three years. Others are craftsmen unable to find steady work.

They stand in the square, at the intersection of Nidhal Street and the busy road leading to the city center, in front of the stores that rent them dirt compactors, concrete makers and other construction equipment. Sometimes they sit at the stalls of vendors on the corner who sell them sweet tea, fried eggplant, potato sandwiches and falafel and remember better days, years ago, when the vendors barely could keep up with the number of customers.

As jobs dry up across the city, workers are becoming more desperate.

“The lucky ones are well off if they had one or two days’ work during the past two weeks,” said Hussein Abdul Jabbar, 37, a former carpenter who came to wait in the square with his brother last week.

Iraqi government officials say unemployment has dropped 10 percent during the past three years, from 28 percent to 18 percent. But that’s based on a snapshot of the jobless that excludes itinerant workers like the men in Tayaran Square. Factor them in, and unemployment rises to about 65 percent, said labor union leaders and economists.

In an Iraqi work force of 7 million, that’s at least 4.5 million functionally unemployed.

In its report to President Bush last week, the Iraq Study Group estimated that unemployment is between 20 percent and 60 percent, part of a faltering economy “hobbled by insecurity, corruption, lack of investment, dilapidated infrastructure and uncertainty.”

Economic growth this year was just 4 percent, less than half of the expected 10 percent, the group wrote, and inflation remains above 50 percent.