diff --git a/autojump b/autojump
index 55abdaa..802e561 100755
--- a/autojump
+++ b/autojump
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ except ImportError:
     import pickle
 
 import getopt
-from sys import argv,exit,stderr
+from sys import argv,exit,stderr,version_info
 from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile
 import os
 import signal
@@ -112,8 +112,11 @@ def find_matches(dirs,patterns,result_list,ignore_case,max_matches):
 def open_dic(dic_file,error_recovery=False):
     try:
         aj_file=open(dic_file, 'rb')
-        #encoding is only specified for python2.x compatibility
-        path_dict=pickle.load(aj_file,encoding="utf-8")
+        if version_info.major>2:
+            #encoding is only specified for python2.x compatibility
+            path_dict=pickle.load(aj_file,encoding="utf-8")
+        else:
+            path_dict=pickle.load(aj_file)
         aj_file.close()
         return path_dict
     except (IOError,EOFError,pickle.UnpicklingError):