Mr Woodhouse said yesterday there were 269 fewer people on a main benefit in the city than there were at this time last year.
The decrease was proof welfare reform had been successful, he said in a statement.
"In recent years, there has been widespread reform of the welfare system, aimed at increasing independence where possible,'' he said.
"This reform is working well. Nationwide, there are 38,000 fewer people on welfare since this time three years ago.''
Mr Woodhouse also said Dunedin parents who had been on sole parent support accounted for 30% (81 people) of the decrease in Dunedin beneficiaries.
"Parents moving into full-time, sustainable employment helps to break the cycle of welfare dependency, because we know that children who grow up in benefit-dependent homes are more likely to end up on welfare themselves.''
Nationally, there had been a 2.5% drop in the number of people receiving a main benefit, while beneficiaries receiving the sole parent support benefit had dropped 5.7%, the release said.
Dunedin Methodist Mission chief executive Laura Black said if sole parents and other beneficiaries really were moving off the benefit into gainful employment, then that was "good news''.
But she was sceptical.
"There are rules that get in the way of people who are without work and want work, and who have low income, from being benefit-eligible or from getting the benefits they're entitled to.
"It's a little difficult to take [the numbers cited by Mr Woodhouse] at face value.''
Mr Woodhouse's office did not respond to a request for comment on Ms Black's claims when contacted yesterday afternoon, nor did it answer questions about whether the statistics cited meant the former beneficiaries had since gained employment.
Ms Black said demand for Methodist Mission's services had been "stable'', but she acknowledged that did not necessarily indicate there were more people working in Dunedin.
The better measure of how employment and unemployment were shifting was the labour market statistics report periodically published by Statistics NZ, Ms Black said.
The survey, last published with data from September 2015, showed the number of employed people in Otago had gone up by 1900 (1.1% of the total working-age population) since September 2014.
But it also showed there were 600 more unemployed people (0.34% of the working-age population) and 900 more people who were not in the labour force (0.51%) than in September 2014.
The December 2015 version of the report is due out in February.
