Another month of discouraging news for workers in the Quinte area and other parts of Eastern Ontario. Statistics Canada says the unemployment rate for Hastings, Prince Edward, Lennox and Addington, Frontenac and Renfrew counties last month was 8.9 per cent, up from 8.4 in March, and 6.2 per cent in April of last year. Twenty-and-a-half-thousand people in the labour force in the five counties weren’t working, up by eleven-hundred from the month before. Ontario’s unemployment rate in April was 9.1 per cent, just point-two above the local figure.
