The nation’s unemployment rate has reached 10.2 percent, the highest it has been in twenty-six years. The Labor Department announced on Friday that the economy lost 190,000 jobs last month. October marked the twenty-second consecutive monthly decline in jobs. This is the longest losing streak on record dating back seventy years. African American workers remain hardest hit. The black unemployment rate is now 15.7 percent and significantly higher for black men. In all, more than one out of every six workers were unemployed or underemployed in October. Many economists are projecting the unemployment rate will continue to rise.

Aneta Markowska, economist at Societe Generale: “It is obviously psychologically damaging. And I think it is likely to go up a little bit further, given that we’re already at 10.2 percent and the type of growth and the type of employment trends that we anticipate over the next few months. You know, it is quite possible that we might even test the post-war record high of 10.8 percent at some point early next year.”