Reporting from Washington-- The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 10.2% in October, raising questions about the staying power of the budding economic recovery and confronting President Obama with a politically explosive new challenge.

Not since 1983, after a double-dip economic downturn had sent the auto, steel and housing industries plunging, has the jobless rate gone so high. And many economists predict that it will go higher still in coming months -- and remain high for most if not all of next year.

Some 15.7 million workers now have no jobs, the government said in releasing its monthly unemployment report, and an estimated 5 million more are working fewer hours and drawing smaller paychecks than they were before the country fell into the worst recession in a generation.

In an effort to blunt the effect of the dismal news, Obama made a point of signing legislation Friday that provides additional aid for the jobless and expands and extends tax credits for home buyers.

But few economists thought either measure would substantially change the worsening employment picture or solve the president's increasingly urgent political problem: how to spur the creation of more jobs -- and quickly.