"Any change in the number of beneficiaries we see is usually seasonally affected," she said. "There's a lot of work available in the three or four months over Christmas so often people who we've seen over the winter are then able to take up those jobs," she said.
"But I have heard, outside of our service, that a lot of students that have come back to Hawke's Bay for the summer have had difficulty getting work so perhaps that might have impacted on the small increase in [Hastings] beneficiary numbers in the last quarter."
Nationally, the number of people on benefits dropped by more than 12,000 to 321,869 recipients in the year to December.
Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said the decline showed the Government's welfare reforms were continuing to support New Zealanders into work.
"This is the lowest December quarter since 2008 and the third consecutive quarter [June, September, December] with such record lows," she said.
"Performance is strong around the country with only two regions, Wellington and Taranaki, registering a slight increase compared with the same period in 2013."
Numbers on the Jobseeker Support benefit - which made up the largest portion of benefit recipients - dropped by more than 5000 to 124,631.
Sole parents were also increasingly moving off benefits and into work, she said.
"There are more than 5300 fewer people on the Sole Parent Support benefit compared to last year, a drop of 6.8 per cent, and every region around the country recorded a reduction," Mrs Tolley said.
"The reductions we're now seeing will mean fewer people on benefit in the years to come which means we're going to see healthier, more prosperous households."
New Zealand Beneficiaries and Unemployed Workers Union spokesman Miles Lacey said the drop in beneficiary numbers didn't necessarily mean people's living situations had improved.
"A lot of the people who have moved into work will only be working casually or part-time so it can still be really hard for them to make ends meet," he said.
A greater focus on building people's skills, in line with job requirements, was needed to improve employment, he said.
An overhaul of the welfare system has seen sickness beneficiaries, sole parents and widows with no children under 14 face the same requirements as other jobless people, pushing more people off benefits and back into paid work.
