"That's baked in," Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was quoted as saying, noting "There is a lot of downward momentum."

He said a rise in the unemployment rate to 7 percent "seems almost certain" and he put the odds of an increase to 8 percent at "better than even," according to the report.

Krugman, an ardent critic of the administration of US President George W. Bush and its domestic and foreign policies, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity."

His approach is based on the premise that many goods and services can be produced at less cost in long series, a concept known as economies of scale.