Jobless Rate at 14 year high

The Labor department announced the unemployment rate hit 6.5% in October as another 240,00 jobs were lost. Unemployment is now higher then the last recession in 2001 where it peaked at 6.3 percent in June 2003.

So far this year, 1.2 million jobs have disappeared.

The employment market is much weaker than economists expected. Economists were expecting the unemployment rate to climb to 6.3 percent and for job losses to fall by around 200,000.

"The U.S. recession is deepening," said Michael Gregory, economist at BMO Capital Markets Economics. The final quarter of this year is getting off to a "particularly ugly" start, he said.

Many expect the unemployment rate to climb to 8 percent (and maybe higher) next year. In the 1980-1982 recession, the unemployment rate was as high as 10.8 %.