The city's unemployment rate declined slightly month-over-month but remained significantly higher than at the same time last year, according to Statistics Canada labour market survey numbers for September released Friday.
The unemployment rate stood at 7.7 per cent, down from 7.7 per cent in August. But the rate stood at 4.9 per cent as of September 2014 with the number of people holding down jobs dropping noticeably over that time.
A year ago, 52,300 people were working but as of last month, the total was 48,200.
Moreover, 16,200 were not participating in the workforce while 2,700 were seeking jobs. Those figures have since risen to 19,7000 and 3,800 respectively.
The month-over-month decline appears to be a product of fewer people seeking work as that number declined by 200 while the total not participating rose by 200 and the number of people working remained the same.
The numbers are based on a three-month rolling average and do not separate the number of people working full-time from the number working part-time.
