The local unemployment rate appears to be following the overall trend seen across the province as it slowly inches downward.
Sarnia Lambton Workforce Development Board Executive Director Mikelle Bryson-Campbell said a synopsis report will soon be released but the local unemployment rate is currently sitting at 7.1 per cent, which is slightly lower than the provincial average of 7.3 per cent.
Bryson-Campbell noted that higher unemployment rates were seen over the past year.
At its peak, Sarnia-Lambton's jobless rate reached 10.7 per cent in August 2025, whereas other nearby municipalities such as Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex reported rates of 9.9 and 9.8 per cent.
For the most part, the local unemployment rate in 2024 hovered around 8 per cent, before it jumped to 10.2 per cent in December 2024.
"Our unemployment rate has been slightly higher in the Sarnia-Lambton area," Bryson-Campbell said. "Likewise, our participation rate, which is the number of folks who are working -- that are eligible to work -- has been slightly lower in the Sarnia-Lambton area compared to the rest of the province."
She said there are two contributing factors for a lower participation rate: an aging population and higher average household incomes.
"So perhaps only one member of the household is not needing to work," she said.
Bryson-Campbell said there has been a recent jump in part-time job postings.
"We do have a very large healthcare and social assistance sector and that tends to trend a little bit more toward part-time employment so that might partially explain that," she said.
With spring just a month away, more seasonal employment opportunities are expected to arise.
"We have a very robust tourism sector here ... so we do expect in the next few weeks, we will see an increase in job postings in this sector," she said. "Likewise, we have a very large construction sector here so we will also expect to see an increase in these types of postings and activity in the labour force based on these trends as well."
Local statistics and reports can be found at slwb.org.
