600,000 public sector jobs expected to go

Wednesday 30 June 10

Treasury Information has been leaked suggesting that last week’s budget could increase unemployment by up to 1.3 million.

The office for budget reasonability has forecasted 490,000 job losses by 2015 and 610,000 by 2016.

Harriet Harman acting leader of the Labour Party in the Commons argued that the coalition budget would push people “into abject poverty”

David Cameron dismissed these claims stating, “we will be at the end of this Parliament with unemployment falling."

However the Guardian said that leaked Treasury figures predicted that up to 120,000 public sector jobs and 140,000 private sector jobs could disappear annually for the next five years.

A treasury spokesman on Tuesday evening though could not confirm whether this information was genuine.

Last week’s budget outlined that 25% cuts would be made across government departments excluding health and foreign aid.

Mr Osborne has not outlined how many public sector jobs will go however the government has previously insisted that the bulk will come from not filling vacant posts, rather than by making redundancies.

At the same time, the government is predicting that 2.5 million jobs will be created as a result of private sector growth by 2015.

General Sectary of the Trade Union Council called the government’s predications “absurd” further stating that, "This is not so much wishful thinking as a complete refusal to engage with reality,"