The nation's unemployment rate jumped to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October, as U.S. employers hunkered down for a deepening recession by slashing another 240,000 jobs.

The Labor Department said about 10.1 million Americans were unemployed last month, 2.8 million more than a year ago.

More than half of the 1.2 million jobs lost this year were eliminated in the last three months. Previous estimates of jobs lost in August and September were revised upward yesterday to 411,000 vs. the 232,000 the department previously reported.

"Businesses went on a hiring strike and consumers went on a shopping strike," said PNC Financial Services Group chief economist Stuart Hoffman. "The U.S. economy is slipping deeper into this recessionary sinkhole. It is now pulling in more industries and more companies and affecting more workers and more consumers."

The numbers were worse than economists expected and took the jobless rate above the peak unemployment rate following the last recession, which occurred in 2001. That downturn generated a 6.3 percent unemployment rate in June 2003, a level economists had forecast for last month.

"The shock was not so much October's decline as the huge downward revision in September," said IHS Global Insight economist Nigel Gault.

The revised figures illustrate "just how rapidly the economy deteriorated late in the third quarter," he said. Mr. Gault forecasts monthly job losses of more than 200,000 through the first quarter and predicts the unemployment rate will top 8 percent next year.

Mr. Hoffman expects a jobless rate of 7 to 7.5 percent by mid-2009. He does not believe unemployment in Western Pennsylvania, at 5.4 percent in September, will reach that level. The region has not been affected as much by mortgage foreclosures as the rest of the country and its more stable base of education and health care jobs also provides some insulation, he said.

Excluded from the Labor Department's figures were another 1.6 million Americans who were "marginally attached" to the work force last month, including 484,000 who aren't looking for work because they believed there were no jobs available for them.

"Factoring in discouraged workers, unemployment is closer to 8.2 percent. Add workers in part-time positions who cannot find full-time employment and the hidden unemployment rate is about 12 percent," said University of Maryland economist Peter Morici.

The jobless numbers provide more evidence of the daunting task awaiting President-elect Barack Obama, the winner of a campaign heavily influenced by the sharp, sudden deterioration of the U.S. economy.

"Efforts will now intensify to develop a large stimulus package, likely at least $200 billion in total, with a combination of spending and tax cuts," Mr. Gault said.

The loss of another 90,000 manufacturing jobs last month is something the economic relief measure must address, said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

"It's crucial for the Congress and Administration to respond to this wave of unemployment through immediate passage of a job-creating stimulus package directed at rebuilding our infrastructure with strong Buy American provisions," he said. "A focus on manufacturing, which has a multiplier effect like no other economic sector, would pay immediate dividends."