The recession took a firm grip on Britain last night as well over 4,000 jobs were slashed in a day, fuelling fears that the total will be more than two million by early next year.

With figures today expected to show the highest number of people out of work since 1998, a roll call of household names in the pharmaceutical, technology and media sectors announced swingeing cuts.

The figures heightened fears that employment in all sectors of the economy will be hit. Until now, the bulk of job losses have been among manufacturers, housebuilders, hotels and restaurants and financial services.

The grim outlook emerged as Gordon Brown again called on other countries to follow Britain, China and Germany in giving boosts through tax cuts or spending increases to their economies. However, opposition parties seized on an admission from the Employment Minister, Tony McNulty, that there would have to be tax rises to compensate “in the long term”.

The Bank of England is expected today to downgrade sharply its forecasts for the economy to reflect a substantial recession into next year, opening the way for further, early cuts in interest rates, perhaps before Christmas.

Virgin Media announced 2,200 job cuts, all in Britain. GlaxoSmithKline, Yell, Psion and Taylor Wimpey also said that they were cutting their workforces, while Vodafone said that it too was set to shed staff.

Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages, said that it was cutting a tenth of its workforce, 1,300 jobs, 300 of them in Britain. GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-biggest drugmaker, said that it was shutting down its manufacturing site in Dartford, Kent, by 2013, with the loss of 620 jobs.

Taylor Wimpey, the housebuilder, said that it would shed 1,000 jobs in the second half of the year, on top of the 900 it cut in the first six months of the year. Psion, the British manufacturer of handheld computers, said that it was making 200 people redundant, although it said that the number of British workers losing jobs was “in single digits”.

Vodafone, which employs 10,000 workers in Britain, is also poised to make job cuts. It announced plans to reduce costs by £1 billion in the next three years but refused to say how many staff would be affected.

While yesterday’s toll was unusually grim, average daily job losses in Britain are approaching 1,000.

The dismal news for workers comes as official figures are set to show that the rise in unemployment is gathering momentum. The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance is expected to jump by up to 50,000 in October and cross one million by Christmas, the first time that it has risen this high since January 2001.

The Government’s preferred, survey-based measure of unemployment is tipped to have risen to a ten-year high of 1.8 million between July and September. Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, said that yesterday’s job losses showed how seriously the recession was hitting British families.

He said: “But we should never treat these as just statistics. Each will be a very human story, and as it gets harder and harder to find new jobs, many will now be facing a huge cut in their weekly income, with benefits so low.”

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has set up a high-level panel to monitor lending by banks to small businesses to try to get credit flowing again. The Institute of Directors said that about one million businesses currently had trouble accessing finance.

Where the axe is falling

2,200 jobs in Britain with Virgin Media 1,000 with Taylor Wimpey

620 with GlaxoSmithKline

300 with Yell, out of a total 1,300 losses

40 with Six, the Swiss stock exchange

10 or fewer with Psion, out of a total 200

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