You don't need to tell Debbie Kenney about the job market.

When the former public relations manager and events planner went looking for her networking group - the people she relied on for career development and emotional support - she found that she was already rubbing shoulders with them in the unemployment line.

"Those were people I was networking with to help me find a job, and now just a few weeks later, they are really my competitors," she says. "It's really gotten that bad."

Yes, but though it may be small consolation to people like Kenney, Rochester is in better shape than much of the rest of the nation, in a good news-bad news kind of way.

New labor department statistics put unemployment in the Rochester area - Monroe, Livingston, Ontario, Orleans, and Wayne counties - at 8 percent as of January. That's a dramatic jump from December's 6.7 percent, but it's also lower than the national average of 8.5 percent.

Typically, January unemployment ranges from a low of 4.2 percent to a high of 6.4 percent, says Tammy Marino, a labor market analyst with the state Department of Labor.

"The 8 percent is an all-time high," she says. "It's the highest over-the-year increase that we've ever seen."

Unemployment in the Rochester area in January 2008 was 5.7 percent.

The biggest drop came in manufacturing, which shed 3,500 jobs from January 2008 to January 2009, and retail, which shed 1,300 jobs over the year.

Nationally, manufacturing employment is down 7.7 percent.

And while consumers are certainly pulling back on spending, Marino says, the drop in retail employment is also indicative of long-term trends, including competition from Internet retailers.

There are areas of growth.

The combined education and health sector continues to report record-level employment, Marino says. That sector grew by 4.1 percent, adding 4,300 jobs, from January 2008 to January 2009.

Government added 900 jobs over the year - decide for yourself whether that's really a positive - and there were small gains in professional and business services and leisure and hospitality. Both of those sectors added 200 jobs.

"We're a little surprised," Marino says, of the leisure and hospitality growth. "Consumers are cutting back, but it appears that they still enjoy going out for a good meal."

That sector includes restaurants.

It's good news that the Rochester area is being spared the heightened agony of much of the rest of the nation, but the reasons why aren't as encouraging.

"Unlike the rest of the nation, the Rochester area never recovered from the 2000 recession," Marino says. "Employment's still down fairly dramatically."

In other words, when you're already near the bottom, there's not far left to fall.

The market has shed 16,500 jobs since employment peaked in 2001, Marino says.

Another reason why Rochester has been spared, to some extent: Kodak. Employers have reacted to the large-scale shedding of manufacturing jobs at the company and downsizing at other companies by being very conservative in their hiring practices.

More reasons: local housing prices did not see the large increases that occurred in other areas of the nation and employment locally is not as heavily concentrated in the financial sector.

If you look at the latest labor department report in terms of worst-news, best-news, Marino says, the worst is the "remarkable" jump in unemployment from December to January. And unfortunately, she expects the downward trend to continue, driven by employer and consumer anxiety.

The best news? We're not California.

"When we look at private-sector job loss over the year, we're down three-tenths of a percentage point in the Rochester area," Marino says. "The state is down 1.6 and the nation is down 3.2. By comparison that way, we're doing pretty well."