Rhode Island employers last month shed 4,000 payroll jobs, with declines reported across virtually every industry sector, a government report out today says.

The state unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.3 percent, according to data from the state Department of Labor and Training. That rate is lower than it otherwise might have been had 300 people not dropped out of the labor force last month.

The labor force tends to shrink along with the economy, as people either leave the state to find work or give up searching for work, a phenomenon that economists call the “discouraged worker” effect.

Since January, Rhode Island has lost 19,000 payroll jobs and the labor force has declined by 6,400, the steepest over-the-year drop since 1994.

Nationally, the unemployment rate in November rose two-tenths of a percentage point, to 6.7 percent.

The number of Americans who said they worked part-time last month due to economic reasons — either because their hours were cut or they couldn’t find full-time jobs — surged to 7.32 million, the most since records began in 1955, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The increase in part-time workers helped prevent an even larger rise in the national unemployment rate.

Massachusetts’ unemployment rate last month was 5.9 percent; Connecticut’s was 6.6 percent.

Michigan, which in October was tied with Rhode Island for the nation’s highest unemployment rate, saw its jobless rate in November jump to 9.6 percent. (Not all states have reported their November rates yet.)

In Rhode Island, retailers anticipating a dismal holiday sales season pulled back on their usual seasonal hiring, resulting in a loss last month of 1,400 payroll jobs, the single largest drop of any industry sector. (The jobs data are adjusted to smooth out seasonal fluctuations.)

David Riordan, co-owner of the OOP gift stores, said he normally hires five to six additional staff for each of his three stores during the holidays, but this season only hired about three per store.

“I just felt like with the uncertainty of the economy,” Riordan said, “I didn’t want to bring on a lot of last-minute people and then not have the hours for them.”

Rhode Island retailers have now trumped manufacturers in job losses, having shed 3,600 jobs since November of last year, compared with 3,200 in manufacturing, the labor data show.

Employment in professional and business services ranked third, down 2,800 jobs over the year. Professional and business services include temporary employment and is considered an economic indicator, because their ranks tend to grow when the economy is expanding and fall when it’s contracting.

Last month, job losses included wholesale trade (-500), manufacturing (-400), accommodation and food services (-400), professional and business services (-400), health care and social assistance (-300), financial activities (-200), and arts, entertainment and recreation (-200).

The only sectors last month that added jobs — 100 each — were education, transportation and public utilities.

Rhode Island has paid out several rounds of extended unemployment benefits to workers who have run out of benefits and still cannot find work.

“The extended benefits actually mask weakness in the labor market,” said Leonard Lardaro, a professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island. “If there weren’t the federal extended benefits, you’d probably see many more people dropping out of the labor market.”

Material from Bloomberg News was included in this report.

larditi@projo.com