WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. unemployment rate could rise even further after last week's announcement that it entered double digits, economists said.

    Unemployment reached 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent from the previous month, a level not seen in the United States for nearly three decades, since April 1983.

    More than eight million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession, when the jobless rate stood at 4.9 percent, and nearly six million have been unemployed for more than six months.

    Competition to land a job is fierce, with around six applicants for every open position, according to research from the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.

    Institute economist Heidi Shierholz said job losses could continue until at least next summer and surpass the 10.5 percent mark.

    Rising unemployment could also endanger the economic rebound --the U.S. economy expanded last quarter for the first time in a year -- with families facing slashed incomes, hurting consumer spending, she said.

    While unemployment would eventually decline, the economy was likely to sputter along for some time and the jobless rate was unlikely to drop to 4 or 5 percent until 2014, she said.

    "We are looking at a big unemployment rate for the next five years," she said.

    Indeed, a number of factors were hindering a full-steam-ahead recovery, she said. Credit was still tight, preventing small businesses, which employ a significant portion of the nation's workforce, from expanding.

    Consumers were spending less and saving more, hindering a consumer-driven rebound. Interest rates could not be lowered to stimulate economic activity because they were near zero. The mortgage foreclosure crisis was ongoing and state and local budgets were facing declining tax revenues. That meant states must either reduce spending or raise taxes, she said.

    Dean Baker, co-director at the Washington D.C.-based Center forEconomic and Policy Research, said jobless rates could continue to rise for the next several months and unemployment could "get dangerously close to 11 percent."

    And the recovery would be slow, he said. "If you look back at prior recessions, the economy came back roaring," he said, "But there is no way we are going to see that (this time)."

    The United States is seeing little job creation and the economy needs 100,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with new entrants to the labor market, he said.

    Lawrence Mishel, president of Economic Policy Institute, said the consequences of such high job losses were devastating for workers and their families. The think tank's research shows that a double-digit unemployment rate will cause child poverty to soar to27 percent overall and to more than 50 percent for African American children.

    Furthermore, the official 10.2 percent unemployment rate did not fully count the millions of workers who had been reduced to working part-time, or those who had given up looking for work altogether, he said.

    Indeed, the country now had an underemployment rate -- a measure of part time workers who would prefer full-time work and people who had given up seeking work -- of 17.5 percent.

    Robert Johnson, associate director of economic analysis at Morning star, an independent research provider, said unemployment typically peaked eight months after a recession's end. The downturn hit bottom in June, meaning unemployment could continue on for four months, he said.

    But how much it will rise remains an open question.

    "My gut is that it won' t rise past about 10.8 percent," he said. October's increase was a significant jump from September's 9.8 percent. Previous months saw much smaller increases.

    "This was a rather big jump for one single month," Johnson said.

    While the economy was once again seeing growth, employers often delayed hiring after a downturn for fear of a relapse. So many firms increased employees' hours or hired temporary workers before they started filling new jobs, he said.

    Once companies began hiring again, people who had given up looking for work jumped back into the job market and caused a bottleneck.

    "People who were going to school or (taking) vacations see the market picking up and they want to come back in, so hiring gets better," but the unemployment rate does not improve because it does not count those who gave up looking for work, Johnson said.

    Ben Carliner, fellow at the Washington-D.C.-based Economic Strategy Institute, said, "A big question mark surrounding any economic recovery is where will the demand come from."

    "For many years, U.S. households have been the driving force behind global demand, but they are now struggling under high debt loads and rising unemployment," he said. "Without sustained increases in wage growth and job creation, it is hard to see how U.S. consumers can drive the recovery. They are still trying to deleverage and pay off their debts."

    Still, the stimulus package had offset an even worse crisis, he said.

    "We are no longer staring into the abyss of another depression, and the stimulus program, along with the Fed's monetary policies, are the reason," he said.

    However, the U.S. economy was not out of the woods and could face an "L shaped" recovery, with unemployment remaining high, wage growth tepid and an overhang of debt remaining, as private sector demand was not enough to jumpstart rapid economic growth, he said.

    "We won't be facing a depression, or even a recession in the technical sense of the term, but the economy won't be as buoyant as during the bubble years," he said.

Special Report:  Global Financial Crisis