The unemployment rate hit 10.2% today. The report overall appears to be a bad one, bu the numbers are actually a little deceiving, as the BLS changed the seasonal adjustment factor, which made the report worse than it would have been with the old adjustment, but also the birth/death adjustment they applied added about 50,000 jobs more than the October average for the past 5 years. Overall, I would argue that using the old seasonal adjustment average and the average birth/death adjustment would have left the establishment survey with a net gain/loss of 0 for October (much better than expected).
Even though I wrote some "good" news above, the report really isn't that good. Not only did the unemployment rate jump up to 10.2%, but U-6 jumped to 17.5% (a gain of .5%), which means we are still seeing adds to both part-time and discouraged workers. The workweek was unchanged at a very low 33 hours, and the employment-population ratio fell again to a horrible 58.5%.
Even with huge jumps in the ISM report, manufacturing still shed 40,000 jobs last month and services continue to free-fall (a unique situation to this recession).
In the end, I would venture that the establishment survey report was (or should have been) much better than anticipated, but the household survey was again dismal and not very encouraging to those looking for a real recovery instead of economic stagnation.
UPDATE: I wanted to add my analysis of typical birth/death adjustments and seasonal adjustment factors from the last 5 years.
Analysis of adjustments to Establishment Survey