PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s 12.8 percent unemployment rate was the nation’s third-worst in August, one notch lower than its second-worst ranking in July, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

Nevada, with 13.2 percent unemployment in August, overtook Rhode Island for the second-highest joblessness rate in the country. Michigan continued to suffer the most in the country, with a 15.2 percent unemployment rate last month.

Behind Rhode Island were California and Oregon, tied for the fourth-highest rate with 12.2 percent unemployment in each state last month. Rhode Island, California and Nevada all set new records, according to the Labor Department’s data, which dates back to 1976.

In all, 42 states lost jobs in August and 27 states saw their unemployment rates increase. (Labor market fluctuations can keep a state’s unemployment rate from rising even when jobs are lost.) Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., reported August jobless rates of 10 percent or more, down from 15 last month as Indiana fell back to single digits, the agency said.

“There’s still a fair amount of weakness in some of the larger states,” Steven Cochrane, director of regional economics at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., told Bloomberg News. “State finances are probably going to be among the last of all the various components of the broad economy to turn around.”

The national jobless rate was 9.7 percent in August, up from 9.4 percent in July. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict the national unemployment rate will reach 10 percent this year.

The U.S. economy has lost nearly 7 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the most of any downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Rhode Island lost 19,200 jobs in the 12-month period that ended last month, reducing the state’s total payrolls to 461,900.