Topeka ? The Kansas unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent in June, the state Department of Labor said, marking the third straight month that the state’s jobless rate has climbed while the national rate has been falling.

The state’s June Labor Market Report showed that on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Kansas economy added 5,700 non-farm jobs during the month, or 0.4 percent. That included 4,300 jobs in the private sector.

But the summer months are typically a time when students go looking for summer jobs, and people who work in seasonal industries like construction expect to be able to find more work. So even though the number of people entering the workforce in June was lower than expected, the department said the unemployment rate still rose a tenth of a percentage point.

During the same month, the national unemployment rate declined two tenths of a point, to 5.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since June of last year, total private-sector employment in Kansas has grown 1.1 percent. The total job market, including public sector jobs, has grown just 0.8 percent.

That’s much slower than the national rate of 2.5 percent in the private sector, and 2.1 percent overall.

Kansas Labor Secretary Lana Gordon, however, still described the June report for Kansas as positive news.

“June was an excellent month for the private sector with a gain of 4,300 seasonally adjusted jobs,” she said. “The last time the state added more than 4,000 jobs in June was in 1994.”

In Douglas County, the unemployment rate jumped four tenths of a point, to 4.3 percent. That’s down from the 4.7 percent local jobless rate posted a year earlier.

Wichita, at 5.2 percent, had the highest unemployment rate of all the state’s metropolitan areas in June.

The Topeka area posted a 4.6 percent jobless rate. In the five-county Kansas City area of Kansas, the combined rate was 4.3 percent. Manhattan’s rate was 4.1 percent.