I think you are right. The gubbermint sees the ten percent level as a psychological threshold, one which blows up the talk about stimulus and recovery and all the rest. We will never see them admit to 10%. But then I think they are lying steadily already, so it will not mean anything to me when it plateaus at 9.8-9.9.
I predict that around mid-January, with the season holiday over, things will completely crash and then, no matter how the press reports it, there will be rage. The press can sing the good news, but then so did Pravda during the Soviet Union. At some point, there will be open revolt or impeachment; the past election showed grassroots action and now the reaction will be grassroots. People still have some seasonal opportunities, but once that is over, unemployment will be essentially the new norm. More people will lose their homes, more will lose their possessions, and the only people who will survive will be the ones who already have homes paid off fully (not many) and people who have specialized skills that aren’t really dispensible.