But unemployment for blacks showed the highest increase in the survey, surging to 14.3 percent from 13.4 percent.

Also, the average duration of unemployment climbed to a 2012 high of 40.2 weeks. The average work week and earnings both showed little change.

Taken comprehensively, the report was better than expected but still representative of tepid growth that is doing little to generate escape velocity for the slow-moving economy.

"You're still seeing that gap of a relay race in the economy where the consumer's feeling a little bit better...but the corporate sector is not as strong," Diane Swonk, economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, told CNBC. "They're not hiring out like crazy, but certainly you've got to welcome these kinds of numbers."

The report comes at a sensitive time with the presidential election looming Tuesday and the economy and specifically the jobs situation at the forefront. (Read More: What About an Election 'Cliff'? Here's What Could Happen)

President Barack Obama has touted the more than 4 million jobs created since the 2009 economic nadir, though the number is much lower — less than 200,000 — when compared to the jobs lost.

"This report is sure to be spun politically by both sides," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. "The bottom line is that the labor market remains unusually weak, but whether it is weak enough to prevent Obama getting re-elected is anyone's guess."

Republican challenger Mitt Romney has pointed out that job creation has been slow and well behind the pace of previous recoveries.

"Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill," the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement.

The unemployment rate is 0.1 percentage points higher than when Obama took office. Obama would be bucking history if he does get a second term, as he would have the highest jobless rate for a re-elected president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"The fundamentals are strong," said Arne L. Kalleberg, sociology professor at the University of North Carolina and author of the book Good Jobs, Bad Jobs. "I do foresee the cyclical aspects of the unemployment situation being rectified.

"What's more problematic for me is the structural sense of things, in that we have created an economy where we have a lot of polarization. There's a hollowing out of the middle, and that is not going to change when the business cycle turns around."

Friday's report comes a month after the Labor Department reported a drop in the unemployment rate below 8 percent that virtually no economists saw coming.

There were 114,000 new jobs initially reported in September, but that number was revised up to 148,000 Friday. August's numbers also were revised higher, from 142,000 to 192,000.