Ireland's unemployment rate, long stuck in the high teens, fell to 6.4 per cent of the labour force toward the end of last year, while the numbers at work exceeded 1.5 million for the first time, according to figures released yesterday.

The quarterly national household survey, carried out by the Central Statistics Office, found that the numbers employed in the September to November quarter last year were 72,000 higher than a year earlier, with the number of males in employment rising by 47,000 and the number of working women up by 25,000.

Almost all of the increase in employment was accounted for by the rise in the number of full-time workers, with the number of part-time workers remaining relatively stable at around 250,000.

The services sector continued to provide most of the increase in employment, with strong growth in business-related services; transport, communications and storage; the wholesale and retail trade and catering, although construction also showed good growth.

Meanwhile, there was a sharp decline of 65,000 in the jobless numbers to 106,000, well below the November live register figure of more than 200,000. Long-term unemployment, traditionally the most intractable category of all, fell to 3.1 per cent of the labour force from 5.5 per cent a year earlier.

However, CSO director Mr Gerry O'Hanlon cautioned that a substantial share of the overall decline in unemployment was due to a fall of 23,000 in the number of people, mainly women, who were recorded as seeking part-time work.

He said the numbers recorded as seeking such work in September 1997, the first time the survey was carried out, had been unusually high but whether this was due to a one-off quirk in the employment situation or in the survey he could not say.

However, an adjustment of 20,000 would be the maximum that would have to be made because of this factor, he said. "That would bring the unemployment decline to 45,000-50,000, still a decline of a third on a figure of 150,000."

The jobless rate was lowest in the mid-east region at 4.8 per cent and highest in the Border area, where it stood at 8.9 per cent. In Dublin, it stood at 5.7 per cent.

The Government welcomed the figures, saying they marked a historic milestone in Irish economic life. "Ten years ago we were looking at unemployment rates as high as 17 per cent. Today we are at 6.4 per cent," the chief whip, Mr Seamus Brennan, said. "We will continue to implement innovative initiatives such as the Fastrack to IT which will see 3,500 long-term unemployed people going into the computer industry."

The one negative in the results was the increasing evidence of labour-supply shortages. The potential labour supply fell to 10.6 per cent of the workforce in the last quarter of 1998 from a high of more than 23 per cent 10 years earlier. "The increasing rate of decline in this indicator is evidence of a further tightening in the labour supply," the CSO said. It said that employment was increasing at a rate of 45 per cent a year and the increase in the population was sufficient to meet about half of the growth in the demand for labour without an increase in the rates of participation in the workforce.

The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) said the figures put paid to the myth that unemployed people did not want to work as 90 per cent of the 72,000 jobs created last year were taken up by the jobless.

It also cautioned that the unemployment problem was by no means solved as there were still 106,000 people actively seeking work.

"These figures show that employers who are having problems filling vacancies should ask themselves what they are doing wrong, not what is wrong with the unemployed," INOU labour market co-ordinator Ms Carole Sullivan said.