October unemployment rate jumped to 10.2%, an important psychological threshold. The decline of employment has slowed down, but the unemployment rate will continue to rise, albeit more slowly.

Employment-population ratio dropped to the lowest level since 1983.

Compared to previous recessions, it looks like we are going to enter a “mother of all jobless recoveries” in this recession.

(graphs courtesy of calculatedrisk, as usual)

In terms of prolonged unemployment, we reached the highest level on record.

(graph courtesy of bigpicture, click to enlarge)

Now listen to Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius on the US job market outlook: