The nation's payrolls declined by 240,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent, from 6.1 percent in September.

The unemployment rate last stood at 6.5 percent in March 1994.

Total employment has fallen by 1.2 million jobs since January, with big job losses in manufacturing, construction, retailing and financial services.

"We are going to have to focus on jobs because the hemorrhaging of jobs has an impact on consumer confidence," Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday in his first news conference as president-elect. He focused on the nation's troubled economy.

He promised to take all necessary steps to "ease the credit crisis and to help working families." Obama called for an extension of federal unemployment benefits beyond the current 39 weeks.

The worsening economy has prompted calls for a stimulus package that would put Americans to work.

"There should be an investment in infrastructure - not just roads, bridges, harbors and tunnels, but also energy efficiency and retrofitting buildings and broadband access, all of which require people to do things," said Carl Van Horn, director of public policy at Rutgers University's John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, in New Brunswick.

"It's a boots-on-the-ground approach and creates demand in other sectors," he said. "And it results in an investment that is enduring - like a bridge."

Yesterday's report does not reflect recent job-loss announcements.

Last month, Chrysler announced it would close its plant in Newark, Del., in December, laying off 1,000.

This week, 400 management and frontline workers at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, in Atlantic City, lost their jobs. On Thursday, Mayor Nutter said he would lay off 220 city employees and eliminate 600 unfilled positions.

"It's an unfortunate reality of the times," said Bart Ruff, of Harleysville, a marketing manager who founded a volunteer organization to help the unemployed.

"We see it in our attendance," he said. When Ruff started Career Transitions in September 2006, about 20 would meet monthly to review job-hunting skills. Today, 100 will gather in King of Prussia, and Ruff had to turn 30 away because there was no more room.

"It doesn't help that the news is grim on so many different fronts," he said. "It's very discouraging."

For those already without jobs, the situation is worsening.

"We're heading for a deep recession," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, in Lexington, Mass. "Banish the word mild from your vocabulary. It's big, it's bad and it's broad-based."

More than one in five, or 2.2 million, of the nation's unemployed had been out of work for more than 27 weeks. It was taking an average of 19.7 weeks to find a job, compared with 8.7 weeks a year ago, the report said.

Slow business conditions or an inability to find a full-time job pushed 6.7 million people into part-time work, up from 4.4 million a year ago.

"People are more vulnerable today going into this recession than they were in the previous recession," said William Rodgers, chief economist at the Heldrich Center.

The nation heads into recession after a very weak period of prosperity with lackluster job growth, said Rodgers, who was a chief economist in the U.S. Labor Department during the Clinton years.

From November 2001, the official end of the last recession, through January, the nation created 7.3 million jobs. That was half the amount created in similar periods of expansion, Rodgers said.

Equally important, the 7.3 million jobs created in those 74 months were not enough to cover the 120,000 to 150,000 jobs a month considered the minimum to accommodate new workers in the labor market, including college graduates, he said.

Besides the 240,000 jobs lost in October, employers cut 284,000 jobs in September, instead of 159,000 first reported by the Labor Department. August's job losses were revised to 127,000 from 73,000 reported earlier.

Rodgers said he would worry if employment dropped in the locally important education and health-services sector - and it did not.

It was one of the country's few growth areas, adding 21,000 jobs in the month. However, all the growth was in health care, which increased by 31,900 jobs. Education lost 11,200 jobs from September. St. Joseph's and Temple Univerities both recently imposed job freezes.

Retail employment, pressured by decreased consumer spending, dropped 38,000 jobs, including 21,400 in auto sales and related businesses. Financial employment declined by 24,000 jobs, and construction lost 49,000 jobs last month.

Although the number includes 27,000 Boeing workers on strike last month, the biggest losses - 90,000 jobs - were in manufacturing.

"What's been happening at the high level where people are laying off thousands is now reaching down to the small and midsized manufacturers" in our region, said Barry Miller, president and chief operating officer of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, a government-funded manufacturers' assistance organization.

He said that in mid-October, he had not heard of any planned layoffs.

But now, he said, some members are reporting slowing sales. One local equipment manufacturer has no orders for the first quarter.

"That means they'll start layoffs," he said.

This article contains information from Bloomberg News.