PROVIDENCE – The unemployment rate in Rhode Island climbed to a new high of 13 percent in September as the state lost 2,800 more jobs, the R.I. Department of Labor and Training said Friday.

The state’s seasonally-adjusted jobless rate increased two-tenths of a percentage point from the 12.8 percent recorded in August, when it was third-worst among the 50 states. A year ago, the jobless rate was 8.5 percent.

The state jobless rate also continued to be more than three full percentage points above the national rate, which was 9.8 percent in September.

The news comes as senators in Washington continue to argue over the details of a proposal to extend jobless benefits for millions of Americans, including thousands of laid-off workers in Rhode Island, who have exhausted or soon will exhaust their total benefit allotments.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that the Senate is likely to vote on a bill next week. The House has already passed an extension.

Rhode Island payrolls shed 2,800 jobs in September following the loss of 2,400 jobs in August. The two-month decline followed a brief respite in July, when the state added 900 jobs for the first gain in more than a year and a half.

The number of jobs in Rhode Island slid last month to 458,700, the lowest total number since January 1999. The state has lost 37,700 jobs since payrolls peaked at 496,400 in January 2007. Looked at another way, the state has lost 7.6 percent of the jobs it had when employment began to decline.

The state’s resident employment – meaning the number of Rhode Islanders who hold jobs, whether here or elsewhere – fell by 3,900 to 496,400 in September. The number of Rhode Islanders who have a job anywhere was down by 22,800 from a year earlier.

On the national level, Michigan’s unemployment rate – the highest in the country for many months – edged up one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.3 percent in September. Oregon, tied with California for fourth-highest in August, saw its jobless rate fall a half-point to 11.5 percent. Not all states had reported September jobless figures as of late Thursday.

In Massachusetts, the unemployment rate also rose two-tenths of a point in September to reach 9.3 percent, the highest level of joblessness in the Bay State since September 1976. Rhode Island long ago surpassed its previous record in data that extends back to 1976.

In addition to September’s loss of 2,800 jobs, the number of Rhode Islanders on the official unemployment rolls – defined as people available for work and actively looking for a job – increased by 800 to 74,000. The number has soared by more than 50 percent over the last year.

The industry that lost the most jobs in Rhode Island in September was accommodation and food services, which shed 1,000 jobs, the most in any month since the national recession began in December 2007. The DLT said the number of jobs cut by restaurants last month was larger than usual.

Another significant drop occurred in the professional and business services sector, which cut 700 jobs, notably in engineering, architectural and landscaping services.

Other industries that lost jobs in September were manufacturing, down by 600 positions; health care and social assistance, retail trade, and “other services,” each down by 400; transportation and utilities, down by 200; wholesale trade, down by 100; and arts, entertainment and recreation and construction, each down by 100.

Government added 1,100 jobs in September as cities and towns hired teachers for the new school year. Private-sector educational services also added 100 jobs.

The financial activities, information and natural resources and mining sectors each remained unchanged.

Nearly every sector of the Rhode Island economy had fewer jobs in September than it did a year earlier, with the larger decreases in manufacturing (down 5,400), professional and business services (down 3,500), construction (down 3,200) and retail trade (down 2,900). Others lost 1,000 jobs or fewer over the 12-month period.

Manufacturing-production workers in Rhode Island earned an average hourly wage of $14.28 in September, up 21 cents from August and 32 cents from a year earlier.

The state’s average manufacturing work week in September was 37.5 hours, up one-tenth of an hour from August and down four-tenths of an hour from a year earlier.