In Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first month in office, New York City’s unemployment rate continued its long, gradual decline, falling below 8 percent for the first time in five years.

But the city’s rate, which dropped to 7.8 percent in January, is still significantly higher than the nation’s, and more than 100,000 residents of the state have lost their extended unemployment benefits before they could find jobs, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday. Lawmakers in Washington did not renew the extended benefits that had been available to the long-term unemployed since the depths of the last recession.

The report from the Labor Department provided the first look at the condition of the New York City labor market in 2014. It included the annual revision of past data, which reduced the unemployment rate for December to 8 percent, from the 8.1 percent rate that the department originally reported. The last time the city recorded an official unemployment rate of less than 8 percent was in January 2009, just as the financial crisis was taking hold.

The monthly jobs survey that accompanies the unemployment report showed that the city shed fewer jobs in January than it normally does that month. Certain types of employers, including stores, hotels and restaurants, usually take on additional workers before the year-end holidays and lay them off when business cools in the new year.