Barack Obama. Photo / AP Expand

Barack Obama. Photo / AP

WASHINGTON - For months he had warned it was coming but that didn't ease the political shockwaves for President Barack Obama when unemployment topped 10 per cent.

A year after his election, Obama finds it increasingly difficult to blame the sour economy on George W. Bush or offer reassurances that jobless Americans will soon find work.

Never mind that the economy itself grew in the last quarter, that the recession, as measured by the precise formulas used by economists, is over and that the number of jobs lost last month was less than one-third the number of job losses at the start of his presidency.

Those claims about the recession's end do not convince most people, who remain painfully aware of the unemployment rate.

At 10.2 per cent, October unemployment climbed to chart-topping heights unseen in more than 25 years.

The bottom line is that more than 15 million Americans are out of work and 3.5 million lost their jobs while Obama was President. Expected or not, this is Obama's new reality.

"I won't let up until the Americans who want to find work can find work, and until all Americans can earn enough to raise their families and keep their businesses open," Obama said on Friday. That's a hopeful promise but not very realistic.

And it shows that, for the time being, action to tackle record budget deficits will simply have to wait.

The new unemployment rate also came on the same day Obama signed a US$24 billion ($33.72 billion) bill to extend jobless benefits and spur homebuying.

In a sign of Democratic thinking, Representative Carolyn Maloney, who heads Congress' Joint Economic committee, said Democrats would consider new aid to states, an "infrastructure bank" to increase construction jobs and small business tax credits.

What all this amounts to is another stimulus for the economy. Though don't look for Democrats to call it that; they have a tough enough time debating the merits of the US$787 billion stimulus Congress passed this year.

Republicans were quick to pounce on the proposals. Internal polling after Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia showed Republican candidates could do well by arguing against additional spending, while promoting job growth through tax cutting alone. But in rhetoric and in deed, Obama is being forced to address an unemployment picture his economic team had long ago expected to avoid.

Many economists predict the jobless rate will rise again, peaking at 10.5 per cent some time next year before employment makes a turnaround in spring. That still means unemployment will remain high for some time.