Oct. 2--Most of Silicon Valley's biggest tech stocks by market value were lower today, and the Dow and Nasdaq fell after a disappointing report on the nation's unemployment rate. Analyst upgrades, though, lifted Apple, Intel and VMware.

The unemployment rate jumped to a 16-year high of 9.8 percent last month, according to the Labor Department. By contrast, unemployment was at 9.7 percent in August and 6.0 percent a year earlier. The economy lost a larger-than-expected 263,000 payroll jobs, mostly in construction, manufacturing, retail and government.

According to Bloomberg News, Cupertino iPhone, iPod and Mac computer maker Apple was upgraded to "buy" from "neutral" by UBS, which cited "higher iPhone expectations." According to the Apple Insider blog, UBS analyst Maynard Um raised his price target to $265 for Apple shares, which closed at $184.88, up $4.02, or 2.2 percent.

Intel, meanwhile, was raised to "outperform" from "market perform" by Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer, who believes personal-computer sales could grow 10 percent next year, according to Bloomberg. The Santa Clara chip giant, which makes the microprocessors in Macs and most Windows-based PCs, closed at $18.97, up 7 cents, or 0.4 percent.

VMware, the Palo Alto maker of virtualization software, benefited from an upgraded outlook by Next Inning Technology Research. Its shares closed at $38.67, up 92 cents, or 2.4 percent.

Google, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle,

Gilead Sciences, eBay and Yahoo all finished lower.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average, which includes Cisco, HP and Intel, was down 21.61, or 0.2 percent, to 9,487.67.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index dropped 9.37, or 0.5 percent, to 2,048.11.

Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mercspike.

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