Human Resources

Job cuts signal start of public sector recession

(GUARDIAN) - Almost a third of public sector employers are planning to cut jobs during the first quarter of this year, amid warnings that the “starting gun for a public sector recession has been fired”.

In a survey of 700 employers, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said today that redundancies in both the public and private sectors are set to accelerate during the first three months of 2010.

The CIPD report showed that one in four employers across all sectors planned to make redundancies in the first three months of the year, cutting an average 6.2% of their workforce, compared with 3.8% taken out by employers making redundancies in the previous quarter. In the public sector, the public administration and defence are set to be hit particularly hard.

The public sector also fares poorly when it comes to pay. Private sector pay is forecast to rise by 2%, while public sector employees should expect to receive an average basic increase of only 0.9% at their next pay award.

“These figures clearly show that the starting gun for a public sector recession has been fired,” said Alan Downey, head of public sector at accountancy firm KPMG, which helped with the research. “It is now only a matter of time before we are faced with the deepest and most prolonged cuts in public expenditure that anyone can remember.”

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