Australia's labor market has seen an increase in the number of part-time employees securing jobs.

This is according to new official figures from the country's bureau of statistics, which showed there were 33,600 more people in this demographic working in November.

The data helped offset a decrease in full-time personnel, with this section of the labor market dropping by 39,900 to just over eight million.

However, there was an overall rise in the unemployment rate, which went up by 0.1 percentage points to 5.3 per cent.

The data showed the aggregate amount of hours worked by employees throughout the month declined by 11.3 million hours to 1.6 billion hours.

There was also a 0.1 percentage point drop in labor force participation to 65.5 per cent, while labor force underutilization jumped 0.2 percentage points to 12.6 per cent.

On Thursday (December 8th), the Daily Telegraph reported there is a shortage of more than 20,000 skilled engineers in Australia.

Posted by Sarah Dixon