The Four County Labour Market Planning Board says the unemployment rate went up by 0.2 percent in the month of December to finish the year at 3 percent.
There were 3,000 net jobs lost with full-time employment (-4,100) making up a majority of the losses.
Both goods (-700) and service-producing (-2,300) sectors saw net job losses with wholesale and retail (-2,000), and warehousing (-1,500) making up most of the losses.
The provincial unemployment rate fell by 0.6 percent to 5.8 percent.
The annual adjusted unemployment rate for 2021 was 4.2%, 3.1 percentage points lower than that for 2020 which was 7.3%.
The 2021 annual rate is comparable to pre-pandemic levels which was 4.4% in 2019.