Employment rose by 45,000 in June, mostly in part-time work. The unemployment rate was 6.5%, down 0.1 percentage points from the previous month.

Compared with 12 months earlier, there were 351,000 (+1.9%) more people employed. Most of the growth was in full-time work (+248,000 or +1.7%), while part-time employment was also up (+103,000 or +3.0%). The total number of hours worked increased 1.4% over this period.

In the second quarter of 2017, overall employment grew by 103,000 (+0.6%), the fourth consecutive quarter of strong employment growth and the largest quarterly increase since 2010. In the first half of 2017, employment grew by 186,000 (+1.0%), compared with 64,000 (+0.4%) over the first half of 2016.