10% Unemployment Here to Stay: Poll

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- On Friday, the Labor Department gave the bad news: The nation's unemployment rate hit a 26-year high in October, while nonfarm payrolls were slashed by a slightly larger-than-expected 190,000.

While the street consensus had forecast a more subtle rise to 9.9% from September's 9.8%, many public and private sector economists anticipated the rate to top 10% before year end. Despite a smattering of recent positive-sounding economic figures highlighting a recovery, jobless numbers are the proverbial "lagging indicator" and many realize that the job market would get worse before it gets better.

Still, the headline -- unemployment rate at 10.2% -- is utterly disappointing, though not all-together surprising to our readers. A vast majority, about 82%, of readers of TheStreet who took a poll posted before the release of the labor report, believed that the unemployment rate would top 10% during the month.

Looking ahead shows our users to be even more pessimistic about the future of the unemployment rate. A separate poll -- posted immediately after the 10.2% rate was announced -- showed that more than 16% of users anticipate the rate to stay about the threshold for more than 2 years, with almost 27% of users saying the expect the rate to stay above 10% for between 12 and 24 months. The greatest proportion of respondents -- almost 34% -- see the rate staying above 10% for between 6 to 12 months. A mere 3% see the rate falling below 10% within 2 months, followed by the 2% who see it coming back to single digits after only one month.