A rise in the number of people working in the technology and construction sectors has helped to bring those in employment to 2,045,100.
There were 19,300 jobs created in the first three months of this year, according to the Central Statistics Office.
The CSO figures show that employment was up 3.5% or 68,000 in the year to March 2017 - its 19th successive quarterly expansion and better than had been expected.
This compares with an annual rise in employment of 3.3% (65,100) in the final quarter of last year and a year-on-year increase of 46,900 (2.4%) in the first quarter of 2016.
While the numbers in employment are continuing to rise, they are still short of the record jobs figure, which was reached in 2008 when there were 2,160,000 in employment.
Today's figures show the only area showing a decrease in numbers was the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector, which showed a drop of 1,600 in the past year.
The CSO released the latest employment figures as part of its Quarterly National Household Survey.
It also revised the unemployment rate for April to 6.4% from an earlier rate of 6.2%.
The number of people who are unemployed fell by 33,200 to 146,200 in the first three months of 2017, today's figures also show.
Unemployment has consistently fallen since hitting a peak of 15.1% in early 2012.
The Finance Department last month estimated that the jobless rate would dip below 6% by the end of this year.
This means that the economy could reach full employment next year with the unemployment rate forecast to remain at 5.5% from 2018 onward.
