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This just in:

The Las Vegas unemployment rate has hit an astounding 13.9 percent. This represents a near doubling of the rate of just one year ago. Factoring in underemployment in Vegas -- a city full of chronic underemployment in the best of times -- this paints a bleak picture.

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that first time unemployment claims rose dramatically compared to a year ago in September in the state of Georgia. Compared with September 2008, claims were up 17.6 percent to at least 66,610 workers. Claims dropped slightly compared to August of this year.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC that he expects U.S. unemployment to rise above 10 percent from its current level of 9.8 percent and "stay there for a while."

Mr. Greenspan also discussed the economic effects of long-term unemployment, defined as being unemployed for 27 weeks or longer and currently at a historic high with over 5.4 million Americans counted in that group. Workers lose skills when they are out of work for protracted people, and “the economy loses skills.”

Your tireless reporter tried to get a comment out of Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of Pacific Investment Management Co. on his recent comments regarding the natural rate of unemployment.

Mr. El-Erian is quoted by Bloomberg thusly:

We are in the midst of a large and protracted increase in both actual unemployment and its natural rate. It will take at least a couple of years for joblessness to fall to 7 percent from 9.7 percent now."

Both he and Nobel Prize winner Edmund Phelps are cited as having speculated that the natural rate of unemployment would be 7 percent after the economy gets back on its feet. This struck my little commoner's State U-educated brain as odd. The only way the natural rate of unemployment could rise that high would be if long-term aggregate output were to fall drastically.