It is another record breaking month for the region, with many business sectors showing good growth.

The new figure tops records established in March this year when 309,700 people were employed and was broken again in April when that figure surged to 313,600.

Foundation economist Andrew Searles, below, said the growth had been spread between full-time and part-time jobs.

‘‘This growth represents an extra 26,000 jobs in the Hunter compared to the same time last year,’’ he said.

‘‘This continues a trend that we have had for months now, it’s a strong labour market.

‘‘The number of people in jobs has grown 9 per cent since the same time last year.

‘‘The unemployment rate has stayed low at 4.3 per cent, which is down 1.8 percentage points from the same time last year.’’

Mr Searles said the region’s economic future looked bright.

‘‘These are good figures and they are continuing a trend we have seen since the global financial crisis where the regional economy has been gaining strength,’’ he said.

‘‘It comes from across many sectors in the economy, showing the business environment has been generally quite good.

‘‘That’s been undeniably one of the key factors in this continuing trend.’’

International factors are also expected to help drive the local economy, Mr Searles said.

‘‘The key drivers behind rising employment in terms of the view of the economic prospects for Australia appear to be quite good – we have a recent revised budget forecast and the International Monetary Fund has put out an optimistic view for Australia and its trading partners.

‘‘We would expect the Hunter economy to continue to grow, though perhaps not at the same rate it has been recently.’’