UK unemployment has fallen for the first time since May 2011, as more people take part-time jobs to get back to work, official figures have confirmed.

The jobless total dropped by 35,000 to 2.65 million in the three months between December and the end of February, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS). There was a 53,000 increase in the number of people in employment, and the unemployment rate edges down from 8.4 to 8.3 per cent.

However, the good news was tempered by the fact that most of the growth is in part-time jobs, with a huge rise - of 89,000 - in the numbers saying they were working part-time despite a wish to work full-time. In contrast, full-time work continued to decline.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: "One of the things we are seeing is more people coming back into the workplace.

"Some of those moving into part-time work we know are women who either have got children and are coming back into part-time work because they are at school, or who are older and the children are grown-up and are coming back into part-time jobs.

"There are more of those in the workforce today than there were a few months ago," he said.

But TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “While any rise in the number of jobs is welcome, the fact is that full-time employment is still falling and a record 1.4 million are now stuck in involuntary part-time work.

“We now need to turn today’s good news into a sustained fall in unemployment, with decent pay rises and full-time work. The UK is still a million jobs short of its pre-recession health.”

Nigel Meager, Director of the Institute for Employment Studies, commented: “The overall picture painted by these figures remains one in which the jobs market is stagnating. There was a seismic shift at the beginning of the recession in 2008-2009, when unfilled vacancies dropped to under half a million, while unemployment grew from 1.5 million to over 2.5 million. Since that point there has been little real change: both unemployment and vacancies - two sides of the same coin - have stuck more or less at the same level.

“While the overall labour market has been in the doldrums for nearly three years, the job prospects of specific groups have worsened. Most alarming is the impact on new entrants to the labour market, mainly young people. Their position continues to be dire, as the latest figures confirm.”