June marked the fourth straight month of year-over-year employment declines in metro St. Louis,  according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of jobs in the metro area fell by 6,600, or 0.5 percent, between June 2007 and June 2008. That’s a little better than May’s revised number, which showed a 12-month loss of 10,100 jobs.

As the Post-Dispatch reported recently, the local unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent in June.