Puerto Rico's employment shrank 0.4% in August from July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey.
The same survey showed employment rose 1.1% from a year earlier.
The household survey showed that the unemployment rate was down 0.1 percentage point to 11.3% in August from July. The August 2016 rate was a 0.7 percentage point decline from August 2015.
The bureau also releases an employment survey of employers. This indicated island employment in August slipped 0.1% from July and 0.8% from August 2015. It also showed that private sector employment was down 0.04% from July and 0.6% from August 2015.
The bureau has seasonally adjusted all the data used for the statistics in this story.