Jobless workers in North Carolina gained no ground in July as they struggled against a statewide unemployment rate that stayed flat at 11 percent, the state's Employment Security Commission reported Friday.

July's unemployment rate, unchanged from June, marked a sixth consecutive month the number hovered above the previous historic high. Before this year, the state's highest unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in March 1983, a level matched in January and that has since run higher.

"We've got a few months in a row that we haven't seen the rate climb a lot," said Robert Whaples, who chairs Wake Forest University's economics department and focuses on labor markets. "It's reached a plateau now. The bad news is that it's a really high plateau."

But the reality was worse than the unchanged unemployment rate suggests, Whaples said. North Carolina saw almost 13,000 fewer people employed in July compared to June, the ESC said. Meanwhile, only California saw more positions evaporate from the economy, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

That means North Carolina's jobless rate stayed steady only because people previously classified as unemployed quit trying to find work and dropped out of the count, Whaples said.

"Economists call that the discouraged worker effect. People are looking and not finding," he said.

About 21,500 working-age North Carolinians reported in July they had quit looking for jobs because they'd become discouraged by searching without success, the ESC said.

Bill Dubas hasn't given up looking for a new job, but his experience since being laid off in October has been discouraging.

"It's been very lean the past four months. I have not had an in-person interview since the end of April," said Dubas, though he has had three or four phone discussions with potential employers.

Two co-workers on his five-member team of software engineers have headed abroad for greener pastures. Dubas and the rest of his team were laid off in October as mobile phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson slashed more than 400 jobs at its North American headquarters in Research Triangle Park. One co-worker returned to his native Japan. Another returned to Germany, found no prospects and returned to North Carolina, Dubas said.

Whaples noted that job losses have reached nearly every corner of North Carolina's economy.

One surprise was that local governments in North Carolina issued more pink slips than any other field in July, cutting 22,600 jobs in a field that earlier this year was the rare employer adding workers. Manufacturing lost another 5,100 jobs.

The state's largest employment gains from June to July occurred among office workers, with professional and business services adding 5,200 jobs.

The national picture isn't much better. The U.S. unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in July, down a tenth of a percentage point from a 26-year high. The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly for the second straight week as companies continue to shed jobs.