THE amount of unemployed people in Wychavon increased slightly in January, but has dropped significantly since this time last year.

Monthly figures show there were 796 people in the district claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance last month – 1.1 per cent of working-age people in the area.

Although this is a slight increase from 737 in December, it is a drop of 339 since January 2014.

Of these, 509 were men and 287 women.

The picture was similar across Worcestershire as a whole, where 5,035 people – 1.4 per cent of the working-age population – were claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance last month, up from 4,746 in December but down from 8,017 in January 2014.

Across the country as a while the amount of people registering as unemployed dropped by 97,000 to 1.86 million – down almost 500,000 since January 2014.

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the figures showed the coalition government’s plans to get people back into employment was working.

"In the week that Universal Credit started its nationwide roll-out these figures show that a reformed welfare system goes hand in hand with helping people to take advantage of the record number of vacancies available,” he said.

"The jobs-led recovery is changing people's lives for the better on a daily basis.

“We are getting people into work, making work pay, and in so doing we are ensuring a better future for Britain."

Speaking at a Rolls-Royce plant in West Sussex on Wednesday morning, David Cameron welcomed the figures.

"I'm not saying we've solved all our problems, but we are on our way,” he said.

“The deficit is coming down, the jobs are coming, the production is increasing.

“We are the fastest-growing major economy in the Western world."

But leader of the GMB union Paul Kenny said the majority of new jobs being created were low skilled and poorly paid with very little job security.

“Even skilled workers in the UK face being undercut while wages are stagnant or falling in real terms,” he said.

"Most workers have seen little or no evidence of any recovery in living standards due to the Tories wasting their time in office by not promoting real economic growth based on investment and productivity gains."

In the West Midlands the figure stood at 169,000, or 6.1 per cent of the working-age population, a drop of 32,000.

The UK now has the third lowest unemployment rate in the European Union at 5.7 per cent, behind Austria at 4.9 per cent and Germany at 4.8 per cent.