11:03 AM ET: Each month, as regular readers know, I like to unpack the new unemployment number and get behind the data. The news this month continues to be grim. Indeed, it is climbing rapidly toward record-grim territory.

The official U.S. unemployment rate in October rose to 10.2 percent from 9.8 percent in September, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

But the truer measure of unemployment -- a total count of everyone who should be working full time but is not -- hit 17.5 percent in October, the highest level in modern times.

The official unemployment number -- 10.2 percent -- represents only a certain kind of unemployed American. The Labor Department calculates the monthly figure with data provided by a rotating monthly survey of 60,000 households, which are asked specific questions, such as, "Have you looked for work in the past X weeks?" and by jobs data provided by employers.

You can take issue with the way the Labor Department highlights this survey, and I do. But it is a statistically sound way to count one segment of the unemployed.

That being said, there are two other numbers that paint a more accurate picture of joblessness in the U.S.

The first is the total number of people who are either unemployed, who are working part time but would rather be working full time and those who have simply given up looking for work because they are too discouraged by their bleak prospects.

That number rose to a whopping 17.5 percent in October, up from 17 percent in September. Think of that this way: During the Great Depression, unemployment peaked at 25 percent, meaning one in four Americans was out of work.

The Labor Department changed to its new unemployment survey method in the mid-'90s, moving to the narrower count that gives you the official number, or today's 10.2 percent. Which, by the way, is nothing to sneeze at. It's the highest rate since 1983.

Counts were obviously cruder during the Great Depression, but the 25 percent rate, reached during 1933, is analogous to our 17.5 percent today. Both numbers include the widest possible measure of unemployment.

Another measure of unemployment removes the people who are working part time but would prefer to work full time. They are not full-time workers, but they are working, albeit at a lower rate than they'd like.

For October, that number was 11.6 percent, up from 11.1 percent in September. Not as terrifying as the 17.5 percent, but still bad, and still a political headache for the White House.

Here's an analysis I did of the unofficial unemployment numbers in August, showing how this recession is pushing more people in to discouragement and part-time work at the highest level in 10 years, or as far back as the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps apples-to-apples comparisons.

-- Frank Ahrens
Sign up to get The Ticker on Twitter