A new report has revealed that the UK’s part-time workforce has risen to an all-time high in the three months to May.

Many put the rise down to increasing numbers struggling to find full-time employment in the wake of the recession.

According to the report, there was a 148,000 rise in part-time workers in the last quarter, taking the total number of part-time employees to 7.82 million. This is the highest figure recorded since the Office for National Statistics (ONS) first started collecting data in 1992.

The new ONS figures show that a record 27% of the UK’s workforce is now in part-time employment, with part-timers accounting for the majority of the 160,000 rise in total employment levels, which is the largest rise since August 2006.

During the same period, the number of full-time workers fell by 22,000 to 18.2 million according to the ONS.

The ONS also revealed that the number of people who had been out of work for more than a year had reached 787,000 - a 13-year high - after rising by 61,000 in the three months to May.

The level of economically inactive workers - which hit record levels in the quarter leading up to April - showed a slight fall of 0.2% down to 8.1 million. This is the first time this category has fallen since March last year.

However, the number of employees classing themselves as “long-term sick” hit 2.04 million, the highest level since March 2007.