Hamilton's unemployment numbers have improved for the second straight month.

Statistics Canada released numbers for September Friday morning. Hamilton is now showing a 6.8 per cent unemployment rate. That's a half-a-percentage point drop from August .

Canada's economy added 52,000 jobs in September, but the national unemployment rate ticked higher to 7.4 per cent because more people were looking for work. The gain was more than the roughly 10,000 new jobs that economists polled by Bloomberg were expecting.

Statistics Canada said Friday that full-time work made up most of the gains, with a net 44,100 new positions added.

An increase in 34,000 retail jobs and 29,000 new construction workers was more than enough to offset declines in other sectors. "The two big movers last month were the very sectors that had displayed pronounced weakness previously," BMO economist Doug Porter said after the release of the data.

Provincially, Ontario and Manitoba led the way, while the jobs number declined in Saskatchewan, where 3,600 jobs were lost — the first notable drop there since November of last year.

"The underlying trend in Canadian employment is surprisingly stable," Porter noted.