Minister for Jobs Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton has welcomed the latest figures showing a drop in unemployment.

The estimated unemployment rate for October has been revised down to 8.9% - the first time unemployment has fallen below 9% since the end of 2008.

Minister Bruton said this was the 12th quarter in a row of employment growth, with another 56,000 people joining the workforce over the last year.

He said the fall in long term unemployment figures showed the Government was getting to grips with the harder core of unemployment.

Minister Bruton said that if they stuck to the current policy mix they could build on a really strong performance.

The official unemployment rate - as measured by the quarterly national Household Survey - had fallen to 9.1% at the end of September, according to the Central Statistics Office.

Based on the survey data, the CSO has revised down its previous estimates of unemployment for September and October.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell over the three months to the end of September from 9.6% to 9.1%.

This is lower than the EU average unemployment rate in September of 9.3%.There was an annual increase in employment of 2.9%, or 56,000 in the year to September.

The number of people in work is now estimated at 1,983,000 - the highest number in work since the first quarter of 2010.

All of the growth came in full-time jobs, while part-time employment fell by 3,400 over the quarter.

The number of people unemployed has fallen by 42,500 to 203,000, a fall of 17.3%

The number of long-term unemployed has fallen from 6.4% to 5% over the year. 109,000 are now classed as long-term unemployed, a decline of 29,400 or 21% over the year.

Long-term unemployment as a percentage of all unemployed is now 54.1% compared to 56.7% the same time last year.

Today's CSO figures show there were increases in 12 of the 14 sectors of the economy, with the biggest increase in construction, and the biggest fall in employment in finance and real estate.

The number of self employed people increased by 1.7% or 5,400.

The unemployment rate for people aged between 15 and 20 fell from 23.2% 20.7% over the year.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said that employment growth is one of the most tangible signs of economic recovery.

"Today’s data show that in the year to the third quarter, 56,000 jobs have been added to the economy. This marks the 12th successive quarter of employment growth. Overall, employment volumes have now increased by over 135,000 since the establishment of the Action Plan for Jobs in 2012," the Minister stated.

Also commenting on the figures, Alan McQuaid from Merrion Economics said that although emigration has been a factor to some degree in keeping unemployment down, the labour market has improved dramatically over the past couple of years, reflecting the strengthening of the economic recovery.

"Employment rose in 12 of the 14 economic sectors on an annual basis and fell in the other two in the quarter," the economist noted.

"The greatest rate of increase was posted in the Construction (+13.3% or 15,000) sector. The pick-up in this sector is particularly encouraging given that it was the one that suffered the worst in the downturn," he added.