If you’re looking for work, look at Nova Scotia.

According to the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration, the province is currently seeking to attract 3,600 new immigrants a year.

That may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to Canada’s largest cities — nearly 450,000 newcomers immigrated to Toronto between 2001 and 2006 — but it still means plenty of job opportunities for Nova Scotia newcomers.

The province’s economy has historically been based on natural resources, tourism and hospitality, health care, and manufacturing, but more recently, the region is developing into a mini-center for information and computer technology.

The Nova Scotia Office of Immigration says that people in the following fields are in especially high demand:

• Oil and gas industry
• Geology
• Accounting and finance
• Sales
• Engineers and technicians
• Computer information systems
• Health care (particularly nurses and doctors)

Nova Scotia’s aerospace industry is also facing a looming shortage of workers (see “Atlantic Canada banks on future with aerospace” and “Aerospace contracts continue to land“). The Aerospace and Defence Human Resources Partnership has links to job opportunities and career training programs in the aerospace field.

You’ll find links to a wide range of Nova Scotia job-hunting resources here.

Like many other provinces, Nova Scotia has a Provincial Nominee Program to fast-track immigration applications of qualified newcomers. Learn more about immigration options at Nova Scotia: Come to Life or the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration.

The cost of living in Nova Scotia has historically been lower than in many other Canadian provinces. At the end of 2009, for example, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported that the average sale price for a Nova Scotia home was $203,888, well below the Canada-wide average of $342,231 — and significantly lower than average home prices in Alberta ($355,944) or British Columbia ($494,092).

Want to read more about life in Nova Scotia? Check out the East Coast By Choice blog, including their recent post: How I fell in love with Halifax.

And read more Nova Scotia testimonials at Nova Scotia: Come to Life.

Photo by scazon (flickr)