The jobless total declined by 600 in March, with the fall cancelling out a slight increase recorded in February.

Seasonally-adjusted live register figures published by the Central Statistics Office show that the number claiming unemployment benefit dropped to 157,000 over the course of last month. It fell by 2,200 in the 12 months to the end of March.

While the live register is not designed to measure unemployment, the figures translate into a jobless rate of 4.5 per cent. The standardised rate has been at this level for the past five months.

The CSO said that when seasonal adjustments were stripped out, the register total decreased by 2,132 in the year to March. This compared to an unadjusted increase of 968 in the year to the previous month.

The unadjusted decline between February and March was 4,074. A breakdown of these unadjusted numbers shows that the number claiming benefit was lower in all parts of the Republic.

The largest decline came in the southwest, where the total fell by 4 per cent. The largest percentage decreases were recorded in Kerry and Leitrim.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist with Bloxham, said the positive trend in the labour market should continue this year, with employment to increase by 73,000 over the course of 2006.

Mr McQuaid expected construction and financial services to again account for most of the rise. He forecasted a live register average total of 155,000 for the year.

Employer group Ibec was also positive on the numbers, suggesting that those who had been made redundant in the first quarter of the year had found alternative employment.

"The stability of the live register over the past year also reinforces the fact that our high level of net immigration is not resulting in displacement or rising unemployment for Irish workers," said Ibec senior economist Fergal O'Brien.

Figures released by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment at the start of this week showed that the number of jobs lost in the first three months of the year rose by more than a third when compared with the same months of 2005. The decline of the manufacturing sector was largely blamed for the redundancies.