THE NUMBER of Brentwood residents claiming Job Seekers Allowance is the lowest it has been for nearly a decade.

The latest figures show that only 419 people are claiming Job Seekers Allowance and 77.2 per cent of people are now employed.

While this shows only a small drop since October this year, when 425 people were receiving JSA, it is a significant drop since November 2013, when 665 people were claiming the benefit, and February 2012 when numbers were at their highest at 1,063.

Dave Cope, a senior business manager for Essex JobCentre Plus, is encouraged by the fall in people singing up for the hand-out.

He said: “While it was a reasonably small drop since October we have seen this across Essex this month as, the reality is that recruitment in December is normally quite small as Christmas recruitment tends to be much earlier.

“It’s a trend we have seen for the past two or three years.

“But across Essex there has been a 2.6 per cent drop across the last month and it’s a big drop for Brentwood since November last year.

“The last time numbers were this low in Brentwood was August 2008, so this is an encouraging picture, we have reached pre-recession level and then moved beyond that.

“It’s a good sign, a really encouraging reduction.”

Statistics released by the Office for National Statistics have also shown that, of the 58,000 people aged 16 to 64 living in the Brentwood area, on average 77.2 per cent were employed between July 2013 and June this year.

This is considerably higher than the national average for the UK, which shows that just 71.9 per cent of the 40,915,000 strong population aged 16+ were employed.