Ghost towns

I’ve attached some work released by the David Miliband campaign on Friday showing just how the fast cuts to public sector jobs could push up unemployment to 18% in some parts of the country. Back to the kind of Ghost Towns we had in the 1980s.

Leaked Treasury figures showed that the impact of deficit reduction would be the loss of between 1.1m and 1.3m jobs (500,000-600,000 in the public sector and 600,000-700,000 in the private sector).

The government expects 2.5m jobs will be created over the same period. So to deliver net job growth of 1.34m by 2015/16, there would need to be between 2.44m and 2.64m additional new jobs (all in the private sector).

That would mean by 2015/16 there being 25.31m private sector jobs, up from 23.36m today. OBR is predicting 2.5m jobs over five years, with 2.5% growth (average annual). After 1980s recession it took 8 years to do this with 3.5% growth and after 1990s recession 11 years with 3.1% growth [source: TUC]. Job Loss data