In economic news, the nation’s official unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent last month. The Labor Department said 263,000 jobs were eliminated in September bringing the total number of workers unemployed to 15 million. Another nine million people have been relegated to part-time work because their employers had scaled back their hours or they simply could not find full-time jobs. The unemployment rate has doubled since December 2007.

Economist Mark Vitner: “Not only did we have a larger than expected decline in non-farm payrolls, but it was incredibly broad based, and you have to really comb through this report to find anything to be optimistic about.”

Some economists say the job picture may be even more dire because of shortcomings with the government’s model for calculating payrolls. On Friday the Labor Department announced it had severely underestimated the number of jobs lost between March 2008 and March 2009. The Department had originally said about four point eight million jobs were eliminated during that period but now officials admit an additional 824,000 jobs were lost.