The St. Louis metro area lost 26,800 jobs between January 2008 and January 2009, according to new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the fifth straight month of year-over-year job losses, and the biggest negative number we’ve posted so far during this recession.

The December figure, originally reported as a loss of 23,000 jobs for the year, was revised and now shows a loss of just 18,700 jobs. That means we no longer have a “lost decade” for employment growth here, a disturbing trend I pondered in a recent column. But the longer-term news still isn’t good: Metro St. Louis added just 5,000 jobs, for growth of 0.4 percent, between the end of 1999 and the end of 2008.

Here are some of the January numbers by industry (all changes are since January 2008):

• Mining, logging and construction, -6,600
• Manufacturing, -7,900
• Retail trade, -5,000
• Financial activities, -1,600
• Professional and business services, -3,400
• Education, +2,000
• Health care and social assistance, +3,500
• Leisure and hospitality, -3,900

Note: I didn’t notice this at first, but the aggregate employment numbers are from a new series of seasonally adjusted data for the metro area. The industry figures are not seasonally adjusted.