'Fixed grin' over cuts

A bleak picture on the back of the public spending cuts is painted in the latest employment outlook survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) human resources organisation.

Two-thirds (63%) of public sector workers say that stress has increased as a result of the downturn, while half say their organisation is planning redundancies and more than two out of five (44%) says that they are under excessive pressure at work.

Notwithstanding these gloomy results, job satisfaction measures reveal a surprising increase, which the CIPD puts down to the fact that when faced with an uncertain outlook, employees are more likely to be grateful to have a job at all and put on a "fixed grin".

The TUC said the results make David Cameron's plans for a "happiness index", proposed last November, seem all the more absurd and inappropriate.