Unemployment drops to 5.1%

The Australian unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1%, beating expectations and driven by an increase in part-time employment.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said this morning that the unemployment rate had fallen 0.1 percentage points, with part-time employment lifting by 34,000 to 3.4 million and full-time employment up by 12,3000 to 8.063 million. Economists surveyed by AAP had tipped full-time jobs would increase by 12,000.

"The increase in seasonally adjusted part-time was driven by an increase in female part-time employment, whereas the increase full-time employment was driven by an increase in male full-time employment," ABS said.

The number of people unemployed fell by 15,300 last month to 614,200, and the labour participation rate edged up 0.1 percentage points to 65.3%.

The statistics bureau added that although recent reports have suggested 2011 was the year with the lowest employment growth since 1992, this statement does not take into account estimations that population growth last year was the lowest in 10 years.

"An alternative method of analysis that removes the effect of population growth is to compare average employment to population ratios for each year."

"In 2011, the employment to population ratio was 62.2%, which is the third highest rate of employment in the last 30 years, up 0.1 percentage points from 2010 and 6.1 percentage points higher than the low in 1992."

This article originally appeared on SmartCompany.