Unemployment levels in the county continued to fall last month, the latest government figures have revealed - despite it being the first to reflect the end of the furlough scheme.

The figures for October, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), revealed those claiming benefits fell by 1,105 countywide, compared to last month's adjusted figures, to 51,105.

It means around 4.5% of the working population of Kent and Medway rely on Universal Credit and represents a fall of 2.1% on September.

That is broadly in line with national figures which have employment figures for July to September at 4.3%.

It had been feared jobless figures would rise when the government's furlough scheme was finally phased out at the end of September.

The ONS said survey responses so far suggest only a small number of redundancies have been made among the 1.1 million still on furlough when the scheme closed.

But it cautioned the full effect may yet be felt, with some workers let go still potentially working out their notice and on redundancy pay.

In addition, jobless figures fell in all but one of the county's districts - with only Folkestone and Hythe bucking the trend, with a modest increase of 20 (a rise of 0.7%).

It underlines a continuing improvement in the jobs market with Kent seeing a drop in claimants month-on-month since February as the economy began to revive follow the various lockdowns.

Tonbridge & Malling saw the biggest monthly fall of 4.3%, followed by Ashford (3.9%) Swale and Gravesend (both 3.5%) and Dartford (3.3%).

Thanet remains the area with the highest rate of claimants at 7.7%. Tunbridge Wells is the lowest on 3.1%.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak hailed the latest jobs figures as being “testament to the extraordinary success of the furlough scheme”.

He said: “We know how vital keeping people in good jobs is, both for them and for our economy – which is why it’s fantastic to see the unemployment rate falling for nine months in a row and record numbers of people moving into employment.”

The data also showed that, nationally, job vacancies reached a new record high, up 222,000 quarter on quarter to 1.17 million in the three months to October and 388,000 higher than before the pandemic as firms battled to hire amid mounting labour shortages.

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