An unemployment rate in the double digits isn't surprising, but it arrived earlier than most economists were expecting.

I know this because I put the finishing touches on MONEY’s outlook for the 2010 job market less than a week before last Friday's unemployment report came out — the report announcing that the jobless rate had surged from 9.8% to 10.2% in October. Economists I had been talking to only days earlier hadn't forecast a rate that high. And it wasn't just the people I spoke to who had low-balled the number: In mid-October, the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter, which captures the consensus forecast of more than 48 economists, reported that the jobless rate was expected to peak at 10.1% in the first quarter of 2010. More

Many workers unfortunate enough to get the ax in this recession at least had one thing working in their favor: subsidized health insurance. This past February Congress threw out a temporary life preserver for workers laid off between September 1, 2008, and December 31, 2009: For up to nine months, Uncle Sam covers 65% of the monthly premium that these newly unemployed people have to pay to stay on their company health care plan. Previously, if you stuck with your company benefits (under the federal program known as COBRA), you had to pay your share of the monthly premium, plus how much your employer covered. For singles, that totaled an average of $400 a month, according to Kaiser Family Foundation; for families, it came to $1,050.

Thanks to this new subsidy, 38% of unemployed workers are opting to remain on the company health plan, double the number that typically stick with it, according to a study from Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm.

But now that lifeline is running out. More

It's rotten enough, of course, that September's unemployment rate, as reported Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose to 9.8%; it's looking as if the unemployment rate will reach the 10% mark before the Dow hits its own nice round number of 10,000.

But the numbers are even worse for particular segments of the population. As USA Today reports, the jobless rate for single people is more than double that of married people — 13.5% for the unmarried in August vs. 6.3% for wedded workers. More

It's Friday — time to catch up on some of the week's most interesting, and sometimes puzzling, news in the world of personal finance.

1. Thought you had health insurance? Hah! The Washington Post ran a great story Monday about how insurance companies have canceled the health insurance policies of thousands of people after those policyholders have filed for claims related to expensive medical problems. The cancellations, known in the trade as "rescissions," are ostensibly justified by policyholders' failure to disclose previously existing medical conditions — think of someone who survives a heart attack who doesn't admit to cardiac problems when applying for health coverage the following year. The problem, according to the Post, is that rescission has become not only a tool for fighting fraud, but an excuse for insurance companies to weasel out of paying claims. One such case: After a woman filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery, her attorney alleges, her health insurer canceled coverage for her and her husband because he had failed to mention his high cholesterol. More

Do recessions ruin friendships? That's the premise of an interesting, if rather depressing, post by Emily Bazelon on the XX Blog. Class differences can wreak havoc on relationships even in good times, she notes, in all sorts of subtle and not-so subtle ways: Inviting someone to dinner at a fancy restaurant can be tricky if you don't know whether he or she can afford it. (You may recall the movie Friends With Money, starring Jennifer Aniston as the friend without.)

"We often sidestep relationships in which spending habits don’t match up exactly," Bazelon writes, "to spare ourselves feelings of inadequacy or insensitivity, those awkward breaches that make intimacy feel like work."

But recession — and its concomitant layoffs, pay freezes and general economic disquietude — can upset even these carefully-calibrated relationships. When one friend loses a job, she notes, "the sudden uneven footing isn’t easy to negotiate." Quoting from numerous — sometimes sad, sometimes bitter — emails she got on the subject from her readers, Bazelon sketches out the "collateral damage" the recession has inflicted upon relationships.

One reader moved into her parents' house to help them pay the mortgage after her dad's salary was cut; her friends back where she used to live blame her for the new distance (literally) in their relationships. Another reader lamented the loss of “the accidental friendships of proximity" she'd had at her former job, which she lost in the spring.

Of course, such friends are practically the dictionary definition of "fair-weather friends." Unfortunately, as I think Bazelon's article makes pretty clear, virtually everyone has casual friends who fit into that category; it's just that in good times we have the luxury of pretending that they're something more.

Even worse, Bazelon notes. the hard times are straining even the closest of friendships: It's hard to find things to talk about when one person's life is a mess and the other's is going swimmingly.

If all this has made you feel broke and lonely, I'd recommend you not read this blog post about a study finding that those with the most friends at school ended up making the most money as adults, with each "extra friend" adding an extra 2% in salary.

Has the recession put a strain on your friendships?

Ouch. Unemployment is now up to 8.1%, the worst it's been in 25 years, and everyone thinks it's going to get worse before it gets better. If you're out of work, there are no easy or simple solutions for getting a job.

You can try, however, to make sure that no one kicks you while you're down. It's an unfortunate thing, but as in any time of panic and desperation, well-meaning people hungry for work are vulnerable to various job-hunting scams. To prevent someone stealing your ID or otherwise ripping you off under the pretext of interviewing you for a job, or offering you one, the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center has a few tips for job seekers:

• Never put your social security number on a resume.
• Consider opening a separate email account for your job search and not using your primary email address. Putting your email address on a resume, says the ITRC, could open the door to phishing and other email scams.
• Check out a company you found on a website carefully before giving it information. Anyone can create a website, even a good-looking one.
• Avoid any website that requires you to "pre-register" with your social security number, home address or driver's license number. Be wary of companies that tell you, before you've had a series of real, face-to-face interviews, that they need your social security number to do a background check.
• Make sure the person who contacted you actually works at the listed company.
• Steer clear of companies, especially foreign ones, that want to hire you as a "payment representative" or "accounts receivable clerk." You may be asked open up a bank account for the firm, or you may be instructed to keep a percentage of the checks or money orders you receive. You'll likely end up handling (incredibly realistic) counterfeit checks, and you'll get burned. Similarly, avoid scams asking you to forward packages you receive to a third party. These may include stolen or illegal goods.

For more ID theft tips for job seekers, check out this ITRC fact sheet.