Redundancy figures fell sharply last month, providing further evidence of the strength of the jobs market.

Less than 2,000 redundancies were notified to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in July, compared to over 2,600 in the same month last year. The cumulative total for the first seven months is now running below 2003 levels.

Redundancies in the early months of the year were running ahead of 2003 levels and it looked likely that last year's figure of 27,702 - the highest since 1984 - might be exceeded. However there has been a marked improvement in the past two months and the 14,821 redundancies notified in the January to July period were 4.1 per cent below the 15,447 recorded in the first seven months of last year.

The July figure of 1,968 was 24.3 per cent below the 2,601 recorded in July last year. This followed June, where the 1,848 notified redundancies were 31.6 per cent down on June 2003.

The redundancy figures are the latest in a series of positive indicators for the jobs market. Unemployment has been on a generally downward trend this year and the unemployment rate has edged down to 4.3 per cent in June from 4.4 per cent at the start of the year. Meanwhile, the most recent figures for employment show 1.835 million people at work in the first quarter, up 2.9 per cent on a year earlier.

Together with this data, the latest redundancy figures indicate that the jobs market is benefiting from stronger economic growth.

Redundancy levels rose sharply in the second half of last year, with a number of major industrial closures. The fall-off in recent months suggests the international recovery is starting to have an impact on the economy.