Public sector employment is at its lowest level since late 2008, after falling for the fifth consecutive quarter.
The workforce fell to 6.162 million in the first quarter of this year, down 24,000 over the previous quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figure is 143,000 lower than a year ago.The largest quarterly fall came in local government, where employment was down by 27,000. Central government jobs rose by 4,000.
The biggest fall by sector was in education, where 12,000 fewer people were employed. This was followed by public administration posts, which fell by 10,000.
The ONS also reported today that employment in the private sector increased by 104,000 to 23.08 million in the first quarter of the year.
The total number of unemployed people fell by 88,000 over the quarter to 2.43 million, the largest quarterly fall in unemployment since the three months to August 2000.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the fall in unemployment was ‘no comfort to the hundreds of thousands of public sector workers with redundancy notices hanging over their heads’.
He said: ‘The figures show that the government’s cuts have led to another 24,000 public sector workers losing their jobs. Economic inactivity has gone up and the private sector is still weak. It is in no position to create the number of jobs needed to stop thousands more public sector workers joining the dole queues.’
The figures come as an analysis of employment by the Trades Union Congress found that it could take decades for parts of the UK to return to pre-recession employment levels.
At the rate of 0.5% employment growth in the past year, the TUC said it would take around five and a half years for the UK to return to the high of 73% employment. The employment rate for the three months to April 2011 was 70.6%.
The TUC analysed the employment rates for working-age adults from the beginning of the recession in February 2008 to February 2011 to assess the depth of job losses and subsequent growth.
Breaking down the results, the organisation found a ‘stark regional divide’. London could return to its pre-recession employment rate of 70.3% within the next two and a half years, but it could take the wider southeast of England decades to return to the pre-recession level of 77.2%.
Employment in the North of England fell in the past year, and the union said it would ‘take a very long time for their labour markets to fully recover’.
