California hemorrhages jobs, but all states hurting

A man uses a computer to search for a job at the California Employment Development Department in San Francisco, California February 27, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California lost the most jobs of all the states, 79,300, in January, while Michigan registered the highest unemployment rate at 11.6 percent, the Labor Department said on Wednesday.

South Carolina followed Michigan with an unemployment rate of 10.4 percent. Rhode Island, which had its highest unemployment rate on record, was third at 10.3 percent.

Besides losing more jobs than any other state, California had an unemployment rate of 10.1 percent, compared to the national rate of 7.6 percent that month.

Since January 2008, the Pacific coast state shed nearly a half million jobs -- the largest decrease in the country -- as a devastated real estate market and government standstill pushed more and more people out of work.

With 49 states reporting monthly unemployment rate increases and 42 states saying they had lost jobs in January, there were few bright spots in the report.

The largest over-the-month increase came in Maryland, which gained 6,000 jobs, followed by its neighbor, Washington, D.C., which acquired 5,800 jobs. President Barack Obama was inaugurated that month, bringing staff and governmental workers to his new administration.

Washington is hoping federal agencies will have to hire workers in order to implement the recently enacted stimulus plan and therefore push those numbers even higher as the year goes on. Despite the gains in January, the nation's capital still had an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Kenneth Barry)