More people lost their jobs in the construction industry in the third quarter of 2009 than any other UK sector, according to the latest government figures

About 67,000 construction jobs were cut between June and September, the Office for National Statistics revealed. The number of people employed in the sector dropped by 3.1% from 2,162,000 to 2,095,000.

Over the past year, there was an overall fall of 8.2% 鈥� or 187,000 jobs.This means that almost one in three of the 649,000 job cuts in the UK in the past year have been in the construction sector.

Vacancies in the industry fell to half of last year鈥檚 level.