The Office for Budget Responsibility has published its latest projections alongside the Chancellor’s Budget announcement and has increased its estimate of the number of jobs that would be lost in the public sector by 2017.
The report figures indicate that 880,000 jobs will be lost in the next five years which would reduce public sector employment to its lowest level since the welfare state was created after the Second World War.
Chancellor George Osborne has suggested that the private sector will provide jobs to make up the deficit but private businesses hired just 226,000 more people in 2011.
Chief economist at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), John Philpott, said: “The number of people employed in central and local government will have fallen by around 700,000 during the course of the current parliament and by 880,000 by the time the Chancellor hopes to have closed the structural fiscal deficit in 2017.
“This will easily wipe out the net rise in public sector employment under the Labour Government between 1999 and 2009 and take the public sector workforce to a record low.”
Brendan Barber, General ecretary of the TUC, said: “Getting rid of one in seven public sector jobs will have a devastating impact on the public services we all rely on and deal a huge blow to local economies across the UK. A public sector jobs cull on this scale will depress local economies and cause even further job losses in the private sector. “