Canberra, Nov 16 : Australia's unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points in October, new data revealed on Thursday. According to official labour market data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the unemployment rate in October was 3.7 per cent, up from 3.5 per cent in September, reports Xinhua news agency. It marked the 17th consecutive month that the unemployment rate lingered between 3.4 and 3.7 per cent, a streak spanning back to June 2022. The ABS said the number of employed Australians increased by 55,000 between September and October, but that was offset by an increase in the number of people actively looking for work. In order to be considered in unemployment data by the ABS, a person must be of working age, out of work and actively looking for employment. The participation rate, which measures the portion of the working-age population who are either employed or searching for work, rose from 66.8 per cent in September to an equal record-high 67 per cent in October, the ABS said. "The large increase in employment in October followed a small increase in September of around 8,000 people," Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labor statistics, said in a media release. "Looking over the past two months, these increases equate to average employment growth of around 31,000 people a month, which is slightly lower than the average growth of 35,000 people a month since October 2022," Jarvis added. The total number of hours worked by Australians was up from 1.930 billion in September to 1.939 billion in October, grew by 0.5 per cent between September and October and by 1.7 per cent in the 12 months to October. /IANS