Nicola Smith

Today’s public sector employment bulletin is concerning reading. The key topline is that since this time last year the number of public sector jobs has fallen by 132,000, of which 66,000 (50 per cent) have been lost from local government. The release also provides analysis by sector: on the year 24,000 jobs (all full-time equivalents) have been lost in education (with 22,000 lost on the quarter alone), 5,000 in the police, 3,000 in the forces, 29,000 in public administration, 2,000 in health and social work and 4,000 specifically in the NHS. And that is only up to December 2010, before the full scale of the spending cuts have hit. With the OBR forecasting 330,000 public sector jobs will be lost over the next four years it’s interesting that over a third of the reduction already appears to have taken place. With more than £80 billion to be lost from public sector budgets over the spending review period – which hasn’t even started yet -  it’s hard to see how these employment forecasts can stand up.