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The number of jobs in Maryland plunged by almost 14,000 last month from January, the largest one-month job loss in the state in 14 years, according to federal figures released Friday.

And that doesn't include the hundreds of layoffs announced Friday by BP Solar at its Frederick manufacturing facility.

In the past year, Maryland has lost 68,300 jobs and 135,100 since the start of the recession in December 2007. State officials point to emergency legislation to give employers a $5,000 tax credit for each unemployed worker they hire that Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) signed Thursday as one measure that may help stem the tide.

The tax credit "should give employers, particularly small businesses, a little extra incentive to make hiring decisions and reduce the ranks of the unemployed over the remainder of 2010," Alexander M. Sanchez, secretary of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said in a statement.

On Friday, O'Malley and other officials touted Saft America in Cockeysville, which manufactures lithium batteries for the space and defense industry, as one company in the state that is adding employees.

Losses were especially seen in construction and administrative fields, which last month shed 8,000 and 5,100 jobs, respectively. The largest gain in a private sector was health care at 800; local governments saw an increase of 6,000 positions in February.

Other states had more success than Maryland in creating jobs last month, despite the record snowstorms. New Jersey saw a gain of 3,800 jobs, while Massachusetts had an increase of 1,500.

Virginia and Pennsylvania experienced greater job losses than Maryland in February at 32,600 and 16,000, respectively. Across the nation, a net 36,000 jobs were shed.

Maryland's unemployment rate, which measures residential unemployment, increased to 7.7 percent, the highest since April 1983, when it was 7.8 percent. Nationally, the unemployment rate held steady last month at 9.7 percent.

For March nationally, the consensus of economic forecasters is a gain of 200,000 jobs when those figures are released on Friday, Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in a report this week.

"People aren't buying homes, but they are buying other durable goods again — furniture, building materials, sporting goods, and electronic products and appliances," Morici said. "March car sales are strong — up in the range of 12 million units at an annual pace. Part of that is a rebound from January and February sales, which were dampened by snow."

To boost jobs in the long term, U.S. officials need to "challenge China about its undervalued yuan and protectionist trade policies," encourage domestic auto manufacturers to build more fuel-efficient cars and work on developing more domestic oil and gas resources, he said.

The state's job situation took a bleaker turn on Friday, when BP Solar said it is laying off 320 manufacturing workers at its Frederick facility. There are approximately 430 workers at the facility.

BP Solar, a subsidiary of British energy giant BP, is discontinuing its silicon casting, wafering and cell manufacturing at the Frederick plant. Workers in the technology, sales and marketing, human resources and other departments will not be affected, said spokesman Peter Resler.

BP Solar was previously seeking $13 million in federal stimulus grants — including grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Maryland Energy Administration — to expand its technology and product development activities in Frederick.

"At the time we applied, we did feel that we could upgrade our technology capabilities," Resler said.

However, due to rapid changes in the global solar market, company officials felt that even with the grants, BP could no longer make its technology operations competitive and is no longer pursuing the funds, he said.

Staff Writer Chris Huntemann contributed to this report.