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Budget to cost over a million jobs: Official

Double-dip recession feared

Figures from the Treasury suggest the UK economy is likely to shrink by 1.3 million jobs.

The figures are a Treasury assessment of the impact of George Osborne's misery budget.

Civil servants expect to see between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs go in the public sector and redundancies of between 600,000 and 700,000 in the private sector by 2015.

The numbers come from a Treasury presentation on the Budget which was leaked to the Guardian.

One slide predicts losses of "100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts". The Treasury is betting on growth in the public private sector to offset this with growth of 2.5 million jobs in the next five years.

Osborne has predicted a fall in unemployment from 8.1 per cent this year to 6.1 per cent by 2015. But with markets still jumpy and lending to small and medium business still restricted the prospect of a double-dip recession seems a real possibility. ®

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