Between July and August, the Sacramento area bled 3,800 government jobs.

"State, federal and local government all lost jobs. The job losses have been expected with the new budget cycle."

Alex Alvarado is an analyst with the state Employment Development Department. He says the leisure and hospitality sector also lost jobs in August…400 of them. But there was some hiring going on.

"We had four industries that saw job gains: private education and health services, construction, manufacturing and farm employment."

Those job gains helped pull the unemployment rate down to 12.4% in August…a decrease from 12.7% in July. But the rate is higher than August of 2009 when unemployment was 11.6%.