Unemployment across the state rose by four-tenths of a percentage point in May, bringing the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate up to 8.2 percent, more than a full percentage point below the national rate of 9.4 percent.

In May, 532,000 people were unemployed in Pennsylvania, 206,000 more than in May 2008.

Meanwhile, the federal government reported the number of Americans receiving unemployment aid fell for the first time since early January. That is largely due to the fact that many people have exhausted their standard unemployment benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.

"It is unlikely that new hiring has picked up in any meaningful fashion," Joshua Shapiro, chief economist with MFR Inc., a consulting firm, wrote in a note to clients.

In the Pennsylvania report, the manufacturing sector continued to lose jobs last month -- 5,400 fewer than in April, a 0.9 percent decline over the month. Manufacturing has lost a total of 73,200 jobs since May 2008.

Information services lost 1,100 jobs, or 1.1 percent of the jobs in that sector. In the last year, there have been 9,600 information jobs lost in the state.

Pennsylvania's unemployment rate has steadily risen in the last year and is now 3.1 percentage points above where it was in May 2008 when the rate was 5.1 percent.

Nationwide, the number of people receiving unemployment aid fell by 148,000 to 6.69 million in the week ended June 6 -- the largest drop in more than seven years. The decline broke a string of 21 straight increases in the number of people claiming benefits.

The jobless-benefit rolls "always stabilize or decline right around the end of the recession," wrote Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co.