Osborne’s austerity drive cut 270,000 public sector jobs last year
This article makes the challenges facing many public sector organisations clear – they may have reduced the payroll but they also collectively have a quarter of a million pairs of hands fewer to do the work. It explains;
“More than 30,000 NHS workers and 71,000 in education were among more than a quarter of a million public sector staff who lost their jobs in 2011 as the government’s austerity measures started to bite. Official figures revealed that a total of 270,000 posts were cut from the public sector payroll last year, reducing the workforce by almost 7%, to 5.94 million.”
….and we have trailed many times in Hinterland before how rural places are more dependent on the public sector for their economic underpinning. Things are not all doom and gloom however with new private sector jobs starting to show in the form of some green shoots as set out in this article in the Telegraph:
It explains: “Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that between November and January, 45,000 jobs were created in the private sector. Over the same period, 37,000 jobs were lost in the public sector.
This is the first time since the start of 2011 that the private sector has created more jobs than the public sector has shed. Chancellor George Osborne has always maintained that any economic recovery would be led by the private sector.”