With December marking the official beginning of the winter, the month also saw more Yukoners working in part-time positions.

According to unadjusted employment figures released by the Yukon Bureau of Statistics last Friday, there were 300 more people working part-time in December than in November.

The number also rose by 300 when compared to December 2004.

The number of Yukoners working in part-time positions has been on a steady rise since last July, when it was at 2,100 people.

It climbed by 100 people each month until November, when it jumped by 300 to 2,700 people.

December saw 3,000 individuals employed part-time while 12,300 were working full-time positions.

The number of full-time jobs dropped by 400 compared to November and by 500 from the same period in 2004.

The number of people labelling themselves as not currently being in the labour force has also risen by 200 to 5,600, compared to the 5,400 in November.

In December 2004 there were 5,200 Yukoners saying they weren't in the labour force.

Meanwhile, the size of the territory's labour force decreased by 100 to 15,900 people compared against the 16,000 workers in November. It is a 500-person drop from December 2004.

Despite the moving numbers, the number of people employed remained at 15,300, the same as November.

The 4.4 per cent unemployment rate and the 71.2 per cent employment rate also remained unchanged from November.

The unemployment rate decreased by 1.1 per cent from December 2004 when it was 5.5 per cent.

There were 700 people unemployed in the territory in December 2005.

The employment rate in December 2004 was at 71.8 per cent and has fallen by 0.6 per cent over the last 12 months.

The labour force participation rate, however, decreased slightly by 0.4 per cent compared to November. It is a 1.9 per cent fall from the 75.9 per cent participation rate in December 2004.

While the number of people employed in the Yukon last month slumped when compared against December 2004, on a national level, employment was up 0.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2004.

The bureau has been monitoring employment statistics since 1992.

Before September 2003, the numbers never dipped below the 10 per cent unemployment mark.

Since that time, the numbers have been on a slow decline. However, there has been a slow, but steady, hike in the unemployment rate since September 2005, when it hit a historic low of 4.2 per cent.

The statistics related to the size of the labour force and the number of people employed have also been slowly growing proportionally; however, they do fluctuate with the seasons, with the summer statistics generally faring better than the rest of the year.

When looking at the yearly average, the Yukon's labour force grew 2.2 per cent, or by 358 people, since 2004.

The average number of people employed in the territory grew by 458 people or three per cent when compared against the 2004 statistics.

The unemployment average dropped slightly to 5.1 per cent in 2005 compared to 5.8 per cent in 2004.

On a national level, Canada's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in December 2005 was 6.5 per cent.