LANSING (AP) - As teenagers left their summer jobs for school last month, Michigan's unemployment rate dropped to 6.2 percent, the state said yesterday.

August's unemployment rate is down 0.4 percentage points from July's 6.6 percent, the state Department of Career Development said. But it remained higher than the national rate of 5.7 percent.

Last month's state unemployment rate was 0.7 percentage points higher than in August 2001, when it was 5.5 percent, the department said.

The number of people employed in August dropped by 7,000 from July, and unemployment declined by 22,000.

Patrick Anderson, principal of the Anderson Economic Group of Lansing, said he doesn't believe 29,000 people left the labor market last month.

"You could read this as very encouraging," he said about August's lower unemployment rate, "and it may be encouraging after we get this confirmed. There's not another one-month period where we had this kind of change. I don't think it could happen."

Jim Rhein, a labor market analyst for the Department of Career Development, said the drop in unemployment doesn't necessarily indicate that an economic recovery is underway.

Instead, he said the state simply saw a larger decline than usual in the number of teenage workers that might have been counted as unemployed during the summer but are now back in school.

"The jobless rate decline in August primarily reflected fewer persons, particularly youth, in the job market," said Barbara Bologna, director of the Department of Career Development.

Although last month's unemployment rate is down from July, Rhein said the state's unemployment rate has been essentially unchanged since November 2001.

"We had a little bit of a spike for June and July, but 6.2 is pretty much the average so far this year," he said.

Seasonably adjusted payroll jobs in Michigan dropped by 10,000 last month to 4.5 million, the state said. The service industry lost 8,000 jobs and manufacturing lost 6,000 jobs. Government employment - which includes teachers - increased by 4,000 positions.

Payroll jobs are down 41,000, or 0.9 percent, so far this year, the department said. Most of those job losses were in manufacturing and retailing.

Manufacturing losses represented the state's greatest weakness last month, Rhein said. Typically, there are auto plant layoffs in July while companies change models and workers are rehired in August.

"There was some recovery from July, but it wasn't quite as strong as it normally would be," Rhein said.

The average weekly earnings for manufacturing jobs in Michigan last month were $836.80, a drop of $7.20 over the month and of $5.70 over the year. But workers put in more time last month than a year ago, averaging 43.9 hours last month compared to 42.8 hours in August 2001.