Idled American workers, this is not your parents&rsquo; recession. </p><p>Unemployment rocketed above 10 percent in October, the first double-digit rate since the recession in the early 1980s.</p><p>But experts warned that the current job-market malaise won&rsquo;t be cured as easily this time around. And at least one forecaster said Friday&rsquo;s report means next year will be even worse than previously thought.</p><p>The jump in joblessness to 10.2 percent in October also brought some calls for a bigger federal response.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re obviously going to need more stimulus,&rdquo; said Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.</p><p>Jobs remain hard not only to find but also to keep.</p><p>Mike Hoffman, 61, of Raytown, lost work this summer but got back on a payroll after three months. In a &ldquo;double whammy,&rdquo; that new job disappeared on Monday, Hoffman said while at a Missouri Career Center on Friday.</p><p>October&rsquo;s unemployment rate was the first in double-digits since June 1983. The Labor Department also said payrolls shrank by 190,000 during the month.</p><p>Both numbers were higher than forecasters had guessed. The rate exceeded even the highest estimates among 81 economists quizzed by Bloomberg News. </p><p>The unemployment rate doesn&rsquo;t include people without jobs who have stopped looking, or those who settled for part-time jobs. Counting those people, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent.</p><p>Investors, however, seemed undaunted by the report as stocks nudged higher on expectations that the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates low for some time.</p><p>The jobs report came the same day President Barack Obama signed a $24 billion extension of jobless benefits and tax credits for homebuyers, both of which help stimulate economic activity. </p><p>&ldquo;I won&rsquo;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,&rdquo; Obama said.</p><p>Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who heads Congress&rsquo;s Joint Economic committee, said her party would consider new aid to states, an &ldquo;infrastructure bank&rdquo; to increase construction jobs and small-business tax credits.</p><p>Concerns about double-digit unemployment reflect doubts that this economy will be able to regenerate the kinds of jobs many of America&rsquo;s 15.7 million unemployed have lost.</p><p>It was easier for the 1983 economy to do that because unemployment reached double digits then mostly because economic activity had slowed.</p><p>The economy was much more industrially based then, and layoffs meant temporary idleness. Factories geared back up once the economy began to grow again.</p><p>Today&rsquo;s job market, by contrast, has been racked by structural changes that mean many lost jobs won&rsquo;t be coming back. </p><p>Construction crews disbanded by housing&rsquo;s bust won&rsquo;t be reassembling in large numbers anytime soon. And despite some factory expansions, including the addition of a third shift at the General Motors Fairfax plant, much manufacturing work around the country has shifted to machines or foreign factories.</p><p>&ldquo;A lot of this unemployment is structural,&rdquo; said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo. &ldquo;These people have the wrong skills, and they live in the wrong places.&rdquo;</p><p>They&rsquo;re also getting tagged with the highest rates of unemployment.</p><p>According to Friday&rsquo;s report, unemployment among construction and extraction occupations hit 19.1 percent in October. Production workers&rsquo; joblessness reached 14.5 percent.