Unemployment has fallen  to 10.0% in March, from 10.1% in February and 11.9% a year ago.

The live register showed a monthly decrease of 4 thousand 700 in March , reducing the seasonally adjusted total to 350 thousand 600.

It's the lowest recorded rate of unemployment since January 2009.

It means that unemployment will almost certainly be in single digits by April, down from a peak of 15% in February 2012.

The seasonally adjusted figures show that the number of men signing on fell by 2,900 (-1.4%) last month, the number of women fell by 1,900 (-1.3%)

This means that annually the number of men claiming unemployment assistance decreased by 12.8 per cent - the rate of fall for women claimants was slightly slower at 7.7 per cent.

Long term claimants have also decreased by 10 per cent.  One fifth of the total numbers on the live register are part time and casual workers.

Craft and related remains the largest occupational group on the Register, despite the fact that the number in the group fell over the year by 12,509 (-15.2%) to 69,759.  The second largest annual percentage decrease was in the Associate professional and technical group (-13.1%).