CHELMSFORD has seen yet another significant drop in the amount of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance, making December’s figure the lowest since December 2002.

Dave Cope, a senior business manager for Essex JobCentre Plus, is thrilled with the figures, which show that there are more than 100 less people claiming the benefit.

He said: “Chelmsford has gone down to just 1,722 people claiming Job Seekers Allowance, showing a significant drop since November when this stood at 1,838.

“This is quite a big drop and is in fact the biggest drop of any of our Job Centres for this latest set of figures.

“Last time the register was this low, it was December 2002.

“It’s a bigger drop than other places.

“The labour market is very good in Chelmsford and business is booming too.

“Chelmsford certainly has got the feel of economic growth.

“There is a lot going on in the next few months, there is the new John Lewis store going up and there is a lot of finance industry recruitment and construction is booming in Chelmsford too.

“There are a lot of job opportunities in the area so we would expect the JSA figures to be dropping but we are pleased this month that there has been such a significant change.”

Nationally there has been another reduction in the unemployment figures and a 2.7 per cent drop in Essex.

Mr Cope added: “In terms of Essex, we had a 2.7per cent drop in the number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance, which is in line with the reduction across the last three to four months.

“This takes us down to 17,789 across Essex – it’s nice to be below 18,000.”