BATON ROUGE - Fewer people had jobs in Louisiana in July, but the unemployment rate fell again as even more people left the labor force.

Employer payrolls shrank by 4,500 jobs, with almost half the losses coming in government.

A separate survey shows the state's unemployment rate fell to 6.2 percent in July from 6.4 percent in June. July 2014's jobless rate was also 6.4 percent.

Fewer people reported having jobs, but the labor force fell by nearly 13,000 people. Because so many people stopped looking for work, the number of unemployed Louisianans fell to 137,000. That's down 5,000 from June, and about 2,000 lower than July 2014.

Both sets of figures - adjusted to cancel out seasonal changes - were released Friday by the U.S. Labor Department.