Only 4.9pc of government sector jobs set to be cut
FEWER than one in 20 government sector jobs are set to be cut under the coalition’s austerity plans, a Westminster think tank claims today.
Private sector job creation will be “far larger” than the reduction in government employees, the Centre for Policy Studies expects.
Around 7.53m people work in government-provided services. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is currently expecting 370,000 cuts from the start of this year to spring 2016 – equivalent to 4.9 per cent of all government jobs, and just 1.26 per cent of current employment in the UK. The OBR forecasts an extra 1.3m jobs in the private sector over the same period.
The private sector created 517,000 jobs in the year up to the first quarter of 2011, the report states.
“Losing a job can of course be a personal tragedy for those concerned,” it says. “Yet the coalition plans will simply take official state employment back to the levels seen in 2001-02.”