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Unemployment in London fell by 1,000 in the three months to March, official figures have revealed.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that a total of 426,000 people were unemployed in the region during the quarter.

The region’s unemployment rate was 10.1% and saw a fall of 0.2% during the period. The worst area in the UK was the South West which saw the biggest increase in people out of work at 6.1%.

Across the country unemployment fell by 45,000 between January and March, leaving 2.6 million people out of work.

The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen by 0.2% to 8.2%, lower than the European average of 10.2%.

UK unemployment

Meanwhile, the ONS said the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance last month fell by 13,700 to 1.59 million, which is the biggest fall since July 2010.

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.

But other figures from the ONS showed that the number of people unemployed for more than a year increased by 27,000 to 887,000, which is the worst total since 1996.

The Press Association