The nation’s unemployment rate declined in July, even as government continued to shrink, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, down from 4.2% in June, as the number of unemployed declined by 178,000 from 7.1 million to 6.9 million. “Both the labor force participation rate, at 61.4 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.9 percent, changed little in July,” BLS reported. The private sector added 30,000 jobs in July, largely thanks to a 22,000 growth in the health care sector. Meanwhile, the number of government jobs shrank by 53,000, due to the number of local government jobs falling 57,000.