The TUC has warned that employment will not return to pre-recession levels for 14 years and could take longer in some parts of the country hardest-hit by Government spending cuts.
According to new research, around 2.2 million jobs will have to be created to get the labour market back to pre-recession levels. More than 1.3 million private sector jobs have been lost since 2008 and the TUC fear that 'spending cuts will cause further private sector job losses'.
The number of workforce jobs could fall below 30 million for the first time in 2003 prompting TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber to say : "We may now be out of recession but this has yet to work through any significant job creation. When the spending cuts start to bite and public sector job losses begin in earnest, the government tells us that the private sector can make up the difference, but there are already many people who have lost private sector jobs chasing every vacancy... Even if the private sector does better that in the past, the spending cuts will condemn us to high unemployment for the foreseeable future"