Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is questioning the state Department of Labor’s latest surveys of Connecticut’s jobs market, which found that the private sector added more than 5,000 jobs in July although the unemployment rate climbed to 8.5 percent.

“I am skeptical about the jobs numbers released today,” Malloy said in a statement. “The employer survey states that Connecticut added more than 5,000 private sector jobs in the month of July. The household survey suggests the state lost 15,100 jobs during that same time period. That’s a difference of more than 20,000 jobs.

“A gap of this magnitude between these two surveys has never happened in the 22 years they’ve been conducted.”

Malloy said the household survey suggests 500 jobs a day were lost in July “and there’s just no evidence to suggest that happened.”

The governor noted that when people who have not been looking for work return to the job market because they believe they can find a job, the unemployment rate goes up.

The director of the labor department’s Office of Research acknowledged the contradictory survey results in releasing the department’s monthly labor report.

“The complete disagreement between our two key indicators of labor market health in Connecticut makes an assessment of market conditions difficult at best this month,” Andy Condon said. “These programs have proven vital to our understanding of economic conditions in Connecticut, but we will have to wait until more data comes in to see if July’s results were a statistical anomaly or an early indicator of a turning point in the economy, as yet uncorroborated by other data.”