Fact Service October 2011

Issue 41

Public sector job losses must be delayed

Weak economic growth means public sector job cuts should be delayed, if necessary beyond the next general election, the human resources organisation the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has warned.

The institute said employment in the sector had fallen far faster than the government had predicted, with an insufficient compensating increase in private sector job creation.

The CIPD report, Public sector job cuts revisited, warns that in the current economic climate the continued loss of posts on the scale seen in the past year “would be a false economy”.

The report found almost 250,000 public sector jobs were lost in the year since the current government took office. In the April-June quarter of this year, five times more jobs were shed than had been predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility for the entire year.

These figures implied a loss of 600,000 posts from the public sector in the 2011–2016 period, one-third more than ministers have said they expected.

Civil Service Annual figures from the Office for National Statistics show an annual cut of 6% in the number of civil servants by the end of March this year. Their numbers were down by 29,051 to 498,433 from 527,484 in March 2010.

www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2011/10/pace-of-public-sector-job-cuts-must-be-slowed-says-cpid/

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_237745.pdf