New figures showing another fall in unemployment and near-record levels of people in work were marred today when finance giant Abbey announced plans to close call centres and switch jobs to India.

Hundreds of other workers at the bank face being relocated under plans which were criticised by workers and union leaders.

Boots is expected to announce tomorrow that up to 1,000 jobs are to be axed from its head office in Nottingham as part of a cost cutting programme.

The announcement from Abbey took the gloss from official figures showing that unemployment fell by 29,000 over the three months to November to 1,460,000, the third lowest figure ever recorded.

The jobless rate was 4.9%, the joint lowest since records began in 1984.

The number of people claiming unemployment-related benefit fell by 8,300 last month to 908,200, the lowest for almost 30 years.

More women are in work than ever before but jobs are still being lost in manufacturing firms.

There were 28.15 million people in work in November, an increase of 41,000 over the quarter and 186,000 over the year.

The figures revealed that 12.94 million women were in work, a record high.

But there was more grim news for manufacturing, which lost 116,000 jobs in the quarter to November compared with the previous year taking the total employed in the sector to 3.47 million, the lowest since 1984.

Around 759,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since Labour came to power, according to figures released by the Liberal Democrats.

The party's shadow minister for work Paul Holmes said the ''shocking'' official figures showed that claims of record employment levels could not mask the continuing decline in the sector.

''Manufacturing is sinking fast while the Government sits idly by. The Government seems to have given up the fight to save manufacturing jobs and has left in the lurch the families dependent on those jobs to survive.''