Unemployment numbers are unchanged in Niagara.

Monthly figures from Stats Can show the jobless number for St. Catharines Niagara stood at 8.5 percent in September, unchanged from the month before.

The provincial rate dropped down one notch from 8 percent to 7.9.

Nationally, the economy added 52 thousand jobs last month, five times the amount economists had predicted.

Most of those were in Ontario with the province seeing a gain of close to 32 thousand new jobs.

But the addition of the new jobs, wasn't enough to put a dent in the national unemployment rate which actually edged up one tenth of a point to 7.4 percent.

That's because, while thousands of Canadians found work in September, even more, almost 73 thousand, joined the labour force.