"Fewer on dpb" - more on WFF

Dear Editor,

You report a fall in DPB numbers (DomPost, Dec 19) to below 100,000 "for the first time since 1993". The reasons why are not given.

One is, those people who were on a partial DPB payment due to working part-time have transferred onto the new In Work payment, some with no change to their hours worked. Change the name, change the numbers.

But more worrying than this smoke and mirrors exercise is that numbers have only fallen this far. In 1993, the unemployment rate was 9.2 percent. Today it is 3.8 percent yet we have the same number of people claiming the DPB. That is the real story.