Lorraine Rogers, chief executive of economic development agency The Mersey Partnership, was pleased with the figures, but believes there is still a lot of work to do.

She said: “It is an encouraging sign but we need to concentrate hard on reducing the figure further and in tackling high levels of worklessness persisting in some areas of the city region.”

In September, Halton saw an increase in its claimant rate of just 0.8% – 20 people – while Knowsley, Wirral and Liverpool all saw increases of 1.5% or less. Sefton’s increase of 2.3% was also below the North West average.

However, St Helens’ claimant rate increased by 4.3%, and its rise of 157 people accounted for nearly one- quarter of the city region’s additional claimants. Sara Williams, director of enterprise development at St Helens Chamber of Commerce, said: “The picture is mixed. There are businesses which are finding it tough and there has been a clampdown as people aren’t spending as much. But the Chamber held a briefing with the Bank of England last week, and the companies were all saying they were doing quite well. The general mood is quite steady.

“We are still putting people through to jobs and there are still plenty of vacancies in the borough.

“We are expecting some aspects of the business landscape will change. It’s not a rosy picture, but what we believe is we have got enough experience and knowledge to trade through and out of the problems.”

But the region’s underlying position remains poor, and its six authorities are all in the bottom seven places in the table of 46 North West authorities. Only Manchester, in 44th place, breaks up the region’s authorities.

Liverpool is bottom of the North West list with 5.6% – 16,000 people – of the working age population claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and Knowsley has a claimant rate of 4.7%. The UK rate is just 2.5% and the North West rate is 3.0%.

Elsewhere in the region, Wirral’s rate is 3.6% while Halton, Sefton and St Helens all have a claimant rate of 3.5%. The big increase in St Helens has seen it slip below Oldham and Blackpool in the last month.

Nationally, 1.79m people were out of work in the three months to August, and the unemployment rate of 5.7% is the highest since the spring of 2000. The quarterly increase of 164,000 in the number of people out of work, including those not eligible for benefit, was the highest for 17 years.

The president of Merseyside TUC, Alec McFadden, expects the situation in Merseyside and across the UK to get much worse in the coming months.

“Merseyside’s claimant rate is growing more slowly because unemployment was higher here already,” he said.

“We are officially in recession, the CBI and the TUC have said so. We are not surprised at these figures and my view is it will be nearer 3m next year.

“Our advice centres are getting battered, people are ringing up and coming in wanting to know what their rights are.”

The Department for Work and Pensions yesterday announced a further £100m to help people who lose their jobs. The extra money would help the unemployed and those facing redundancy to retrain.

Employment minister Tony McNulty said: “The new money we are announcing today will help fund training and support so that we can ensure people facing redundancy can access these vacancies and get back to work quickly.”