More than one in 10 members of the American workforce were unable to get a job in October, the Labor Department said Friday, the first time in nearly three decades that the unemployment rate has soared into double digits.

The unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, department said, up from 9.8 percent in September, the highest level since 1983. Employers also continued slashing jobs, though at a slower rate than September, showing that even though the economy is expanding, the job market remains dismal.

The crossing of that symbolic 10 percent barrier is likely to weigh on both the psychology of American consumers and the urgency of efforts in Washington to prop up the job market.

Friday, President Obama intends to sign a bill to extend unemployment insurance benefits longer, reflecting the rise of long-term joblessness. The bill also extends a first-time home-buyer tax credit and expands it so current homeowners are eligible, and the administration and congressional leaders are both weighing other steps they could take to bolster the job market.

The employment report indicated that employers cut a net 190,000 jobs. Those losses were broadly in line with analysts' forecasts, and economists generally view that number as a more reliable indicator of the job market's changes month-to-month than the unemployment rate. That number shows an employment situation that continues to get worse, though at a rate more typical of a normal recession than the severe recession evident earlier in the year.

The results nonetheless show that even as companies began increasing their output in the past few months -- gross domestic product rose at a 3.5 percent rate in the third quarter and likely has continued to rise in the fourth -- they have managed to do so without adding to their payrolls, instead squeezing more production out of their existing workforce.

There were some positive signs in the report. Job loss figures for August and September were revised to show less severe declines than first thought. The average manufacturing workweek rose 0.1 hour to 40 hours, suggesting that employers began to bring production workers back for more hours after cutting their hours over most of the past year.

And perhaps most promising, temporary-help services added 34,000 jobs. Many employers, facing increased demand for their products, bring temporary workers on, adding permanent workers only once they have confidence the higher sales are permanent.

Many economists are forecasting that the nation will start to add jobs again in the first several months of 2010, though the unemployment rate could keep drifting up even after that point. Frequently in economic cycles employers begin expanding their production some time before the jobless rate starts to come down.

The unemployment rate was up among all groups of people, with the steepest rise among teenagers (among whom the jobless rate rose to 27.6 percent, from 25.9 percent), and white people (among whom the rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9 percent)

The construction and manufacturing sectors, which have slashed jobs throughout the recession that began in December 2007, led the job declines, with another 62,000 jobs shed in construction and 61,000 in manufacturing. Retailers also shed jobs, 40,000 of them, as did leisure and hospitality businesses, which cut 37,000.

The sectors with employment gains were few: 45,000 jobs added in education and health services, and 18,000 jobs added in professional and business services, propped up by the rise in temp jobs.