Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that it would post its first annual operating loss in seven decades, the latest sign of the severity of the global downturn in the auto industry.

The Japanese automaker said it would post an operating loss of $1.66 billion for the fiscal year ending in March. That's down from the previous forecast of an operating profit for the year of $6.65 billion.

"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said at the company's Nagoya, Japan, office. The drop in vehicle sales over the past month was "far faster, wider and deeper than expected."

Watanabe also reduced the forecast for the number of vehicles Toyota expects to sell globally this year to just below 9 million, down 4 percent from a year ago. And in a departure from previous years, he gave no goal for vehicle sales for fiscal 2009.

Tight credit markets and slumping economies have hurt automakers worldwide, keeping consumers out of showrooms and making it tough to find financing for those who do want to buy. Sales of cars, pickups and sport-utility vehicles plummeted almost 37 percent in the U.S. last month compared with November 2007 — the worst monthly drop since January 1982.

Toyota's sales in the U.S. — the carmaker's largest single market — fell 34 percent last month and are down more than 13 percent this year.

"It speaks volumes about the severity of the recession," said George Magliano, an industry analyst with IHS Global Insight. "Nobody's immune, and everybody's taking a hit right now."

In addition to slumping consumer demand, Toyota and fellow Japanese automakers Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. have been battered by a soaring yen.

The yen has risen 24 percent against the dollar this year and is trading at 89.89 to the greenback.

That raises the cost of importing vehicles into the United States, although the higher prices aren't necessarily passed on to buyers, further hurting the automakers' profits. It also decreases the value of profits the automakers earn in the U.S. when dollars are converted into yen.

Toyota has been cutting production plans in the U.S. and elsewhere to try to whittle down inventories. Just last week, the company said it would delay plans indefinitely to begin U.S. production of its Prius hybrid at a plant in Mississippi.

The automaker has a 93-day supply of cars in the U.S. compared with a 39-day supply a year earlier, and it has had to rent additional space at the Port of Long Beach, Calif., to store vehicles awaiting shipment to overstocked dealers.

Despite Toyota's struggles, it is still in far better shape than its U.S. competitors. General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. have been forced to idle or shut assembly plants, and GM and Chrysler have turned to the federal government for financial help.

Toyota still expects to record a net profit of $555 million for the current fiscal year. That's less than the previous forecast and just a fraction of last year's profit, but still better than the billions in losses racked up by U.S. car companies.