INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana lost 16,500 jobs in July, more than any other state except Florida and Georgia, and the 0.6 percent erosion in its labor force was the second highest in the nation, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

The state's economic development chief, Nate Feltman, blamed high oil prices for job losses in the auto and recreational vehicle industries but said the state has recruited thousands of promised jobs that haven't come on line yet.

There are "certainly challenging national economic trends, and those trends have an impact on Indiana," said Feltman, chief executive officer of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. "At the same time, we are creating new investment at an unprecedented rate."

Gov. Mitch Daniels' opponent in the November election, Democrat Jill Long Thompson, chided him on the job losses and said the state needed a new direction.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Indiana's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate reached 6.3 percent in July, up from 4.4 percent in July of 2007. It continued a steady increase in joblessness over the previous two months: The rates were 5.3 percent in May and 5.9 percent in June.

Indiana's neighbors had higher jobless rates, ranging from Michigan's 8.5 percent to Kentucky's 6.7 percent. The rate for the nation as a whole was 5.7 percent in July.

The number of Indiana jobs fell to 2.97 million in July from 2.99 million in June, and the 0.6 percent month-over-month decline in the state's labor force trailed only Alaska's (0.7 percent).

Feltman said the latest numbers belied the progress the Daniels administration has made in bringing new jobs to Indiana, with more than 32,000 yet to be filled. The new Honda auto assembly plant in Greensburg, for example, now employs 750 workers but will grow to 2,000 by mid-2009, he said.

"About half of the jobs that have been promised to this state (in the last 3½ years) have yet to come on line," Feltman said in an interview.

Fort Wayne handbag maker Vera Bradley said Friday it plans to hire 490 workers over the next two years, and stockbroker Charles Schwab & Co. said it would expand a client service center and create up to 300 new jobs in Indianapolis by 2013.

Online retailer Amazon.com said this week it planned to open a distribution center in Plainfield that will create up to 350 jobs by 2011, and Nestle USA said it would expand an Anderson food products plant to create about 135 more jobs on top of 300 that already were promised.

"We are doing better than our neighbors in attracting economic investment that will bring jobs over the next couple of years," Feltman said.

On the other side of the ledger, Elkhart-area recreational vehicle manufacturers Monaco Coach Corp., Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International recently announced separate cutbacks totaling more than 1,800 jobs, and Swedish plastics company Trelleborg Automotive said last week it would close its Peru plant, eliminating 200 jobs. Hospital bed maker Hill-Rom Holdings said Friday it was cutting 160 jobs, about a third of them at its headquarters in Batesville.

Feltman said high oil and gas prices have hurt the auto and RV industries, but other Indiana industries are thriving: The orthopedics industry centered around Warsaw has a shortage of 700 to 1,000 workers, and those positions might be filled by laid-off RV workers.

"Not all of Indiana is in recession," Feltman said.

Long Thompson has presented an economic development plan that would organize each of the state's 92 counties into one of three tiers, set by factors including unemployment rate, median household income, and population growth. She would use the tiers to determine how she spends the state's job recruiting dollars.

"Month after month Indiana continues to lose good-paying jobs while this administration does little, if anything, to stop it," Long Thompson said. "I firmly believe that with the right leadership and right priorities we can turn this economy around."