Unemployment has plummeted by 19,000 in the West Midlands in the last quarter – accounting for a large chunk of a 45,000 UK-wide fall.
The jobless total in the region now stands at 228,000, a rate of 8.5 per cent, in the quarter to March, after a third consecutive month of falls.
Across the UK, the jobless total was 2.6 million in the quarter to March, the lowest since last summer, while the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance last month was down by 13,700 to 1.59 million.
The number of people in work increased by 105,000 to almost 30 million, but this was entirely due to a rise in part-time workers.
Almost eight million people are now in a part-time job, the highest since records began in 1992, while those working part-time because they cannot find full-time work increased by 73,000 to a record high of 1.4 million.
Self-employment has also reached a record figure of 4.1 million, up by 89,000 since the previous quarter.
Average earnings increased by 0.6 per cent in the year to March, down by 0.5 percentage points on the previous month because of lower bonuses in the private sector.
Average weekly pay in private firms in March was £2 lower at £460 compared to a year ago.
The 13,700 fall in the so-called claimant count last month was the biggest since July 2010.
But other figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that the number of people unemployed for more than a year increased by 27,000 to 887,000, the worst total since 1996.
In the three months to March, a third of all unemployed people had been out of work for more than a year.
The number of people unemployed for more than two years rose by 5,000 to 428,000.
The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen by 0.2 per cent to 8.2 per cent, lower than the European average of 10.2 per cent.
Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU at 24.1 per cent, while Austria has the lowest at 4 per cent.
Youth unemployment has also fallen, down by 17,000 over the latest quarter to 1.02 million.
There were 9.25 million economically inactive people in the three months to March, a fall of 35,000, mainly due to a reduction in the number of people under the age of 65 taking retirement, as employees work longer and the female state pension age increases.
