A record 10 percent of the nation's mortgage-burdened homeowners fell behind on their loan payments or were in foreclosure during the third quarter, according to a survey released Friday by the Mortgage Bankers Association, which said California and Florida were the biggest contributors to the worsening picture.

The percentage of loans at least a month overdue or in foreclosure was up from 9.2 percent in the second quarter and 7.3 percent a year earlier, the trade group said. In Florida, 7.3 percent of home loans were in foreclosure at the end of September. The number was 3.9 percent in California and just under 3 percent for the nation.

Officials at the trade group said the number of loans entering foreclosure - more than 1 percent of all residential mortgages nationally - would have been higher if not for programs intended to save lenders and loan investors money by modifying the terms of troubled loans.

With the mortgage business already ripped apart by easy-money lending during the housing boom, the recession has added a more traditional creator of bad loans: losing a job.

In a grim employment report Friday, the government said U.S. employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the weakest performance in 34 years, sending the jobless rate to a 15-year high of 6.7 percent. California unemployment is now well over 8 percent.

Combined with a 40 percent decline in California's median home price, the faltering economy is resulting in the highest rate on record of troubled home loans actually going into foreclosure, said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association.

California represents 13 percent of the loans in the country, Brinkmann said, but is recording 19 percent of all new foreclosures.

"California has lost more than 100,000 jobs over the past year, compared to Michigan, the usual poster child for unemployment, which only lost 70,000," Brinkmann said.

The report group shows conditions on Sept. 30. Since then, the stock market has tumbled and the economy has gotten weaker.

Delinquencies on all loan types, including fixed-rate prime loans to the worthiest borrowers, remain on the rise. But the bankers' group said the most intense problems are attributable to boom-era adjustable rate loans - to prime borrowers with tricky pay-option loans as well as to the riskiest subprime borrowers.

"Prime and subprime ARMs continue to have the highest share of foreclosures, and California and Florida have about 54 percent and 41 percent of the prime and subprime ARM foreclosure starts, respectively," Brinkmann said. "Until those two markets turn around, they will continue to drive the national numbers."