Steven Gibson (left), a new temporary worker, is trained by Kirk Johnson on generator assembly at Briggs & Stratton Corp. earlier this month. The state lost private-sector jobs in December for the sixth consecutive month. Credit: Michael Sears

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Wisconsin unexpectedly lost private-sector jobs in December for the sixth consecutive month, the same months in which the nation added private-sector jobs.

Given robust hiring last month at the national level, "I did not expect a sixth month of decline in Wisconsin," said John Heywood, a labor economist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

According to data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development, the state lost an estimated 3,900 jobs in the private sector in December from November. In the same month, the United States gained an estimated 212,000 jobs, outstripping expectations of most economists and raising hopes that employers are gaining confidence at the national level.

What distinguishes Wisconsin is a measurable sense of uncertainty and caution, said Jeff Gerkin, general manager in the Midwest for Right Management, a division of the Manpower Inc. staffing and recruiting firm.

Wisconsin data collected by Manpower show a decline in the number of state employers that want to add staff and an increase in the number that don't know their hiring plans, Gerkin said. Right Management, which specializes in supporting workers who are laid off, has seen neither a decrease nor increase in the pace of layoffs, suggesting that the workforce churn continues at a steady pace, he said.

For all of 2011, Wisconsin gained 13,500 private-sector jobs, double the number from the previous year and the most since 2006, but all of them generated in the first half of last year.

In the public sector, government agencies at the state level shed jobs last month while city and county employers showed job gains. Losses in the private sector and changes in government staffing left the state with an estimated net loss of 1,700 non-farm jobs for December. The employment data is extrapolated from monthly surveys of employers in the public and private sectors.

The unemployment rate, which the government calculates from a separate survey of state households, showed the fourth consecutive month of improvement. The rate fell to 7.1% from 7.3% in November and a 2011 peak of 7.9% in August.

Economists caution that the apparent improvement in the jobless rate was at least partly attributable to more than 1,000 Wisconsin residents who stopped looking for work in December. That removes them from the government's official tally of the unemployed and automatically lowers the rate even without new jobs. In the course of the recovery, the unemployment rate has dipped repeatedly because so-called discouraged workers have given up looking for work.

"The unemployment rate is not a clear-cut indicator because it can improve for good reasons and it can improve for bad reasons, and so far it looks like it has been improving for bad reasons," said Brian Jacobsen, senior portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and associate professor at Wisconsin Lutheran College.

All the employment data are adjusted to strip out recurring seasonal fluctuations due to weather and holidays. December data are also preliminary and subject to revision.

A breakdown of the December state data show an uptick in manufacturing hiring but declines across much of the service sector, including hotels, restaurants and hospitality industries.

Job losses in December were less severe than November, when the state hemorrhaged an estimated 10,600 private-sector jobs.

"The decline in jobs is modest but continues to suggest a divergence between an improving national labor market and a deteriorating Wisconsin labor market," said Heywood at UW-Milwaukee.

Wisconsin employers remain too skittish to add workers, said Gerkin at Right Management. "It's all under the means of getting more productivity out of the current workforce," he said.

At the national level, the employment news Thursday remained upbeat.

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits plummeted last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008, according to the Labor Department. The decline to the lowest level in almost four years added to evidence that the job market is strengthening. The four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, dropped to its second-lowest level in more than three years.