Rhode Island last month shed 1,200 more jobs, and payrolls shrank to their lowest level in nearly four years, a government report released today shows.

The state unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a percentage point, to 5.8 percent, as the ranks of the unemployed last month grew to 33,400 — 5,000 more than in February of last year, according to the state Department of Labor and Training.

Nationally, payroll jobs last month declined by 63,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent.

Massachusetts’ payrolls last month fell by 700, after a 1,000-job gain in January, and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.5 percent.

Rhode Island’s mounting job losses — estimated at 2,900 during the first two months of this year — come on the heels of revised data released last month showing that the state ended last year with a 5,200-job loss. It marked the first annual job decline since 2001, prompting economists to declare that Rhode Island is at the leading edge of a nationwide recession.

Employers’ payrolls have shrunk to just under 488,000 jobs, the lowest since April 2004, the state labor department reported.

During the last 12 months, payroll employment has declined by 7,700, or 1.6 percent, according to the report. Employment in construction, which is closely tied to the housing market, decreased by 2,200 since February of last year — the second-biggest segment decline after the 2,400-job decline in manufacturing.

Professional and business services, which includes temporary help, declined by 2,100 during the same period. Temporary hiring is what economists consider an economic indicator because it tends to rise as the economy expands and decline as it contracts.

Last month’s 1,200-job loss was concentrated in construction (400), retail trade (400), and business and professional services (500), predominantly among temporary help agencies, the report said. The numbers were partially offset by hirings elsewhere.

Contractors in specialty trades suffered most of the job losses in construction. The slowdown was felt keenly by contractors in the house-remodeling business, such as Armand Lucchetti, of Armand & Sons Home Improvement. He said he was now doing less remodeling work and more boarding up of foreclosed houses for banks.

“That’s the only thing keeping me going now, a lot of the foreclosures,” Lucchetti said. “A lot of people don’t want to spend money now because they don’t have money.”

In January, 323 properties in the state were advertised for foreclosure auction, up from 36 in January of last year, according to Rhode Island Housing.

The fallout from the collapse of the market for subprime loans, made to borrowers with blemished credit, and the downturn in the housing market is showing up in payroll job losses in the financial activities sector, which last month shed 500 jobs and has lost 2,100 jobs since February of last year.

That is in addition to the job losses among real-estate agents, mortgage brokers and others who are independent contractors or self-employed and are not necessarily included in the payroll jobs data. The job declines were partially offset by gains in educational services employment, which last month rose by 300 and by 900 since February of last year. Employers in health care and social services, who last month added 100 jobs, reported an 800-job gain during the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, the size of Rhode Island’s labor force last month fell by 3,500, and was down 7,200 from a year earlier, the state reported. That 7,200-person labor force decline, coupled with the 5,000-person increase in the number of unemployed residents during the last 12 months, is a “bad combination,” said Leonard Lardaro, a professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island.

“There are not only more jobless relative to the overall number of persons in the labor force,” Lardaro said in an e-mail, but “the unemployed are dropping out of the labor force and therefore are not counted in the overall rate.” (The government counts as “unemployed” only those people who report that they are available and actively seeking work.) When jobs are scarce, people who do not have jobs may give up looking for work, so the labor force declines. This “discouraged worker” effect, Lardaro said, “is a sign of weakness, especially when combined with continually declining payroll employment.”

larditi@projo.com