Employment for the area came in at 53.8 per cent last month.

That’s up 3.5 per cent from December 2015.

The Stats Canada figures include the City of North Bay, Callander, East Ferris and Bonfield.

Unemployment, meantime, was 5.1 per cent in the final month of 2016.

That’s down 2.3 per cent year over year and is deemed statistically significant because it’s greater than the standard error of 1.2.

The data also shows there were 1,400 more people in the Labour Force in December.