Fidelity Investments, the mutual-fund giant, colonized a swath of Smithfield. Providence-based Citizens Bank began swallowing competitors. The insurer FM Global tapped Johnston for its new $60-million headquarters.

For years, the financial-services sector has been one of the few growing industries in the state’s sputtering economy, generating consistent job growth and high wages. Employment in financial services has risen every year since 1996, up 31 percent in all. The average salary for the state’s finance workers –– including real estate agents, stockbrokers and analysts –– is $67,349, almost 60 percent above the average income.

But Rhode Island’s housing meltdown and Wall Street’s unraveling have not spared the pride and joy of this state’s economy. Total jobs in financial services fell in 2007, and by last November, employment was down to 33,000, nearly 2,000 below the 2007 level.

Today, the U.S. Labor Department is expected to announce unsettling job loses nationally for December, perhaps 500,000, putting last year’s total decline at 2.4 million, the most since 1945. When Rhode Island announces its year-end totals on Jan. 23, the news is expected to be similarly grim.

“Rhode Island’s economy is a mess,” Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said yesterday. “I expect further job loses.”

The state’s unemployment rate, one of the nation’s worst, reached 9.3 percent in November, with 23,100 more out of work than a year ago.

No state is untouched by the financial crisis, which has dried up consumer spending and battered retail and construction businesses. But for Rhode Island, never fully recovered from the collapse of manufacturing, the struggles of the financial-services sector are particularly painful.

State officials rolled out corporate and personal tax breaks and other incentives to lure Fidelity, expand Bank of America’s footprint and keep local firms from skipping town. Those moves have paid off, with the sector producing $1.5 billion in wages.

Local universities began herding students into business programs, dangling the prospect of high-paying, local jobs.

In 1999, Bryant University started a financial-services major, only a year after Fidelity opened its Smithfield complex just minutes from the school.

For years, Fidelity raised student hopes, sponsoring campus events and dispatching executives to judge student competitions and speak on panels. But lately, the Boston-based company has made headlines for its layoffs, disclosing in November plans to dismiss 1,700 people nationwide in the first three months of this year. That followed an earlier announcement of 1,300 layoffs.

At the University of Rhode Island, tales of multimillion dollar Wall Street bonuses and the expansion of the state’s own financial-services sector boosted interest in the finance and international business majors. Starting with this year’s graduating class, the school began preparing undergraduates for the level one Chartered Financial Analyst exam.

In 2006, 75 seniors chose to study finance. But the disappearance of recruiters and drumbeat of negative news shaved that number to just 54 students last year. In recent months, 20 percent of undergraduate finance majors have jumped ship to accounting.

“Graduates this spring are going to face some challenges,” Mark Higgins, dean of the College of Business Administration at URI, said yesterday.

Citizens, Sovereign Bank and Textron all shed jobs last year.

“Anytime you lose jobs, you’re concerned,” said Christopher Cannata, a former marketing manager at Bank Rhode Island who now works at the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. “This is a crucial sector for our economy.”

After years of steady growth, the state’s burgeoning financial-services cluster will not disappear overnight. Finance jobs, at 134 companies, make up around 8 percent of all private-sector employment in Rhode Island. The state has 15 insurance companies, 17 stock brokerages and 25 accounting firms.

Nor are all financial-services companies suffering. Having largely avoided the subprime mortgage plague, the state’s credit unions have not crumbled like some of their larger counterparts. Smaller lenders are not immune to rising delinquency rates, as out-of-work borrowers fail to repay their debts. But as of last September, full-time employment at Rhode Island credit unions had dropped less than 1 percent compared to a year ago.

“It’s been pretty stable,” Rob Kimmett, a spokesman for the Credit Union Association of Rhode Island, said. “Credit unions still have money to lend and they’re making loans.”

Higgins, the URI dean, said the financial-services sector will eventually recover, justifying the investments made by the state and its universities. “There are blips in every sector,” he said. “Everyone tends to be a Monday morning quarterback. I think it is a good bet.”

bgedan@projo.com