Unemployment in Wales is lowest since global recession

Unemployment in Wales has fallen to its lowest since the global recession, figures from the Office for National Statistics have shown.

The number of people who were unemployed in Wales fell by 5,000 between December and February to 76,000.

The unemployment rate of 5% compares to 5.1% for the UK as a whole.

This is the first time the Welsh unemployment rate has been lower than the UK for two years.

Wales was also the part of the UK that saw the biggest fall in unemployment compared with three months ago.

The number of people out of work in Wales has steadily fallen for most of the past 12 months, but has been higher than the UK average since spring 2014.

Welsh unemployment is now the lowest it has been since December 2007 - February 2008, before the global recession.

Across the UK, unemployment rose by 21,000 to 1.7 million between December and February.

That is the first increase since the May-July period of 2015.

The unemployment rate of 5.1% is still down on the same time last year, when it was 5.6%.