Construction job losses declined by 10% in fourth quarter but sector still accounts for one fifth of UK redundancies.

The number of redundancies in the construction industry fell by 10% in the last three months of 2009.

According to government figures 34,000 construction workers were made redundant between September and December 2009 compared to 38,000 in the third quarter of last year.

The fall was even more significant when compared with the fourth quarter of 2008, when 60,000 workers lost their jobs.

The peak level was in the first quarter of 2009 with 67,000 construction workers being made redundant.

The Official National Statistics revealed that nearly a fifth of all UK redundancies were in the construction sector last year.

In a grim year a total of 164,000 lost their jobs in the industry compared to 939,000 redundancies across the whole economy.

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