ALPENA — Northeast Michigan ended the year on a sour note as unemployment skyrocketed in December, exceeding even regular seasonal joblessness.

Across Alpena, Presque Isle, Montmorency, and Alcona counties, more than 8% of working-age residents who wanted a job didn’t have one, according to data released Thursday by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management, and Budget.

That’s up from just more than 6% in November and up from less than 6% in December 2023, according to DTMB figures.

December’s joblessness rate was Northeast Michigan’s worst rate since February 2023.

It was Northeast Michigan’s fourth straight month of increased unemployment.

Statewide, meanwhile, 5% of working-age Michiganders who wanted a job lacked one, according to DTMB. That’s up from 4.8% in November and up sharply from 3.5% in December 2023. December marked the state’s fourth straight month of joblessness hikes.

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Across Northeast Michigan, the region’s labor force — a measure of people either working or looking for work — shrank by 224 people from November to December. The labor force can shrink if people move out of the area, die, retire, or simply give up looking for work.

The number of unemployed Northeast Michiganders — a measure of people who said they want to work but can’t find a job — grew by 495 people, the biggest single-month increase since the coronavirus pandemic hit in spring 2020.

Alpena County’s 5.7% unemployment in December tied with the Upper Peninsula’s Dickinson County for the 36th-lowest rate among Michigan’s 83 counties.

Presque Isle County’s and Montmorency County’s 10.8% unemployment rates that month tied for the state’s fifth-worst rates.

Alcona County’s 9.9% came in as the state’s seventh-worst.

The least-unemployed county in Michigan was Southeast Michigan’s Livingston County, which had a 3.3% unemployment rate.

The most-unemployed county was Mackinac County, where 17.9% of working-age residents were without a job.