The official U.S. unemployment rate rose to 10.2% in October from 9.8% in September. There are now roughly 17 million Americans unemployed; about 7.6 million have lost their jobs during the recession that started in December 2007.

The U.S. economy has started to recover -- Q3 GDP totaled 3.5% -- but one can understand why the nation's outlook remains cautious and muted at best. Historically, unemployment, a lag indicator, tends to drop after the economic recovery has notched a quarter or two. That means the unemployment rate will likely rise at least through Q1 2010, perhaps longer. How high will unemployment go? Perhaps 11%. However, a more important question concerns when net, monthly job growth will resume? Based on current U.S. economic fundamentals and demand characteristics, the nation will be fortunate to see job losses end and job growth resume by March 2010; but job growth may not start until June 2010, or even later.

Economic Analysis: Two variables are making it hard for economists to project future job gains in the U.S. as it comes out of the pronounced recession: 1) uncertainty regarding U.S. consumer spending habits and 2) structural, cyclical, and technological factors acting on the U.S. economy. Historically, consumer spending could be counted on to rev-up, adding lots of jobs as the recovery progressed, but the new "frugal consumer" era is casting doubt on that correlation. Second, the Internet and globalization are changing productive processes so much and so quickly that it's hard to predict which industries will retain jobs, and which will lose them, via transfer to lower-cost production centers overseas or technological advances.

Given the above conditions, it goes without saying that the U.S. will need to create new sectors -- new engines of growth -- to create the roughly 7 million to 9 million jobs it will need to get the nation back to full employment. (And those job figures assume a "new normal" full employment rate of roughly 5.0% to 5.5% U.S. unemployment.)