The Colorado Springs area job market took another turn for the worse in June with the unemployment rate rising to a 17-month high of 9.5 percent while payrolls fell for the first time in nearly two years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The jobless rate, ticking up from 9.4 percent in May, was up for a fourth consecutive month in June after reaching a 2½-year low in December, January and February; the June rate was 0.2 percentage points higher than June 2011. While the area’s unemployment rate remains below the record 9.9 percent it hit in October 2010, the 29,442 area residents looking for work were the most for any month since March 2011.

Local payroll numbers in June confirmed a weakening local job market, falling 0.7 percent from a year earlier to 247,900. The drop was driven by employment declines in both the retailing and tourism industries along with small declines in the construction, government and manufacturing sectors. Those drops more than offset gains in the education, health care, financial services and professional and technical services sectors.

“We have definitely seen a weakening in the national and Colorado economies,” said Tom Binnings, senior partner of Summit Economics, a local economic research and consulting firm. “I’m grateful the numbers weren’t even worse in Colorado Springs as the military bases and defense contractors in the area deal with federal budget cuts.”

The payroll numbers come from a survey of employers, while the unemployment rate is calculated from a survey of households. Both numbers are adjusted for seasonal changes. The surveys were conducted during the week before the Waldo Canyon fire started and thus don’t reflect tourism industry layoffs that resulted from the blaze.

“I would expect the July numbers will be even worse given the significant hits the local tourism industry took during the fire,” Binnings said. “Without the strength we are seeing in the construction industry, our economic numbers likely would be even worse.”

The weakening local job market has made finding work even more difficult for those whose search already seems endless.

“I have been in the job market since 2009, but since I have been out of the workforce since 2004, no one will look at me,” said Kim Anderson, who was laid off as a systems analyst by the bankrupt telecommunications giant WorldCom in 2004 and stayed out of the job market for five years to care for her special-needs child and return to college for her master’s degree in homeland security. “I’ve sent out hundreds of resumés online, but haven’t found anything yet.”

Nancy Johnson has been out of work for a year after she was laid off as office manager at a doctor’s office when the doctor who owned the practice retired. She has been asked to interview for a part-time job, but that job pays little more than the unemployment insurance benefits she now receives. She had been with the practice for two years after operating a house-cleaning business for 15 years.

“There are so many qualified applicants out there who have lost their jobs, so I am competing with people for jobs in my field who have far more experience,” said Johnson, who with her unemployed husband lives on about $1,000 a month from unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps.

The local unemployment rate is well above the state and national jobless rates in June, both at 8.2 percent. Jobless rates in four of the state’s six other metropolitan areas increased in June with unemployment rates remaining unchanged in Fort Collins and Greeley. Nationwide, unemployment rates fell in all but 44 of the 372 metro areas measured by the bureau, with 22 cities reporting declines of at least 2 percentage points.—Contact Wayne Heilman: 636-0234 Twitter @wayneheilmanFacebook Wayne Heilman