Greater Victoria's unemployment rate rose to 7.6 per cent in January -- more than doubling from what it was a year ago.

The rate increased by 0.1 per cent from December, putting the capital region in 14th place among major cities in Canada, tied with Thunder Bay, Ont. A year earlier, Victoria's unemployment rate was just 3.5 per cent.

But there's good news hidden in the employment figures.

All but 300 of the 1,600 new job seekers looking for work found it in Greater Victoria in January compared to the previous month, Vincent Ferrao, Statistics Canada analyst, said yesterday.

The labour force represents the number of people aged 15 years and older who are working or seeking work.

Victoria's unemployment rate was pushed up, not by job losses but because of the increase in the labour force, which increased to 199,300. The number of people with jobs rose to 184,200 last month, up from 182,900 in December, Statistics Canada said.

Year-over-year, Victoria has more people working in retail and wholesale trade, education, health care and social assistance, Ferrao said.

Declines have come in the categories of public administration and other services, as well as in transportation and warehousing, with some in manufacturing, he said.

Canada's employment rate is tied to the economic recovery. Governments have announced multimillion-dollar projects to put people to work, support businesses and get money into communities.

At the same time, baby boomers are continuing to reach retirement age. Greg Baynton, president of the Vancouver Island Construction Association, said retirees will lead to shortages in some trades. Carpenters, general labourers, project managers and cost estimators are expected to be in demand next year.

If the labour market tightens up, as it did during the building boom a couple of years ago, labour costs could increase to business owners, Baynton said.

Infrastructure projects have increased numbers in other trades such as boilermakers and electricians, he added.

Meanwhile, there were 43,000 more Canadians working in January, about three times more than what economists were expecting.

The national unemployment rate fell to 8.3 per cent from a revised 8.4 per cent in December.

The results were better than the expectations of economists polled by Bloomberg, who were calling for 15,000 additional people working last month and a jobless rate of 8.5 per cent.

This comes after a revised loss of 28,300 people from the job market in December, but it was the fourth employment gain in six months.

The employment growth in January was largely driven by women and youth.

It was the first notable increase in employment among young people since the jobs slump started in the fall of 2008, Statistics Canada said.

The private sector was responsible for all of the job gains, and it was mostly from part-time positions. The number of people employed full time was flat, and there was a decline in the number of people self-employed.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the employment figures show the job market is beginning to stabilize.

"The recovery remains very fragile but we have seen in the last six months some stability in the job market," Harper said during a short news conference in Saskatoon yesterday afternoon.

"We've actually seen some net job creation, so that's good news, but obviously we have to keep working all of our levels of government to make sure projects continue to roll out to make sure this recovery takes hold."

Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO Capital Markets, called the concentration of job gains in the part-time category "a big but," adding that "part-time jobs are better than none."

"While the details of this report were less impressive than the headline results, there is little doubt that the job market is grinding forward," Porter added in a research note.

The president of the Canadian Auto Workers said the fact that January's job gains came almost exclusively from part-time work shows that there is not, in fact, a true economic recovery underway.

"Instead it means that more Canadians are ending up in precarious employment, characterized by irregular hours, little job security, low wages and few benefits," CAW president Ken Lewenza said in a statement. "This is really nothing to cheer about."