Canada's unemployment rate was 5.4% in August, ticking up for the first time in seven months as the economy lost 40,000 jobs.
Wages are also up 5.4 per cent compared with the last year.
Provincially, following a decline in July, employment was little changed in Ontario in August.
With more Ontarians in the labour force in search of work, the unemployment rate rose 0.4 percentage points to 5.7%.
In Niagara, unemployment jumped nine-tenths of a percentage point to 5.8% as 5,500 jobs were lost.
However, Niagara is still up more than 15,000 jobs since last August and the number of unemployed people down 44% in the same time period.