The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its latest job figures, showing a surge in full-time employment but a drop in part-time.

The numbers show 47,300 jobs were created in February, seasonally adjusted, the result of a healthy 80,500 jobs increase in full-time work.

There were 33,300 fewer part-time jobs in the same month.

The overall result means the jobless rate did not fall, as a 0.2 per cent rise in the proportion of people in work or looking for it left the total participation rate at 64.8 per cent.

The ABS took the opportunity to revise January’s figures too, saying new data showed the month did not see 3,700 jobs lost as previously reported, but in actual fact 18,000 jobs were gained.

Commonwealth Bank senior economist Michael Workman said the data proves that growth can sometimes occur free from concerted effort or attention.

“A lot stronger than most people were expecting, so hopefully people will take that as a positive sign that you can have job losses that are extremely well publicised in manufacturing, and they are offset by job gains mainly in the services sector,” he told Reuters.

Economist Michael Turner says further analysis will shed more light on what has happened in the last few week, but he predicts the upturn has been caused by employment in residential construction and retail.

“As ever, we warn that these data are noisy, and we strongly doubt the economy is growing quickly enough to be adding 65,000 jobs every two months (as has been reported for 2014 thus far),” he wrote about the data.

“But the trend in the official employment data is at least now looking more consistent with the almost uniform improvement in indicators of hiring intentions over the past couple of months.”

All is not well throughout the nation, with WA posting its highest unemployment rate since December 2003, at 5.9 per cent.

The ABS’ state-by-state breakdown looks like this;

  • NSW: Unemployment steady at 5.8 per cent; participation up from 63 to 63.1 per cent.
  • Victoria: Unemployment steady at 6.4 per cent; participation down from 64.8 to 64.5 per cent.
  • Queensland: Unemployment up from 6.1 to 6.2 per cent; participation up from 65.3 to 66.1 per cent.
  • SA: Unemployment up from 6.6 to 6.7 per cent; participation up from 61.9 to 62 per cent.
  • WA: Unemployment up from 5.2 to 5.9 per cent; participation up from 68.3 to 68.8 per cent.
  • Tasmania: Unemployment down from 7.5 to 7.4 per cent; participation up from 59.8 to 59.9 per cent.
  • NT: Unemployment down from 3.9 to 3.7 per cent; participation up from 75.4 to 75.6 per cent.
  • ACT: Unemployment down from 3.6 to 3.4 per cent; participation up from 71.3 to 71.4 per cent.