HOWZAT

Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said: “What is surprising is the number of jobs that have not been lost. I think there is worse to come.”

The centre predicts that 34,000 jobs will be lost in the City this year.

Some areas of the public sector fared less well: local government has lost 6,000 jobs while the armed forces and the Civil Service have lost about 1,000 each.

Although Labour promised to create thousands of extra nurses and doctors between 2001 and 2005, the increasing NHS payroll is now starting to look embarrassing.

The health department and NHS employers seemed confounded by the increase but guessed that hospitals were pursuing local priorities to hire midwives, matrons and school nurses.

Unions suspected that the new jobs may have resulted in filling posts which were kept vacant after the last NHS financial cutback in 2007, but this was disputed by the health department. A spokesman for the department said that the figures represented a rise of less than 2 per cent out of workforce of 1.3 million. But annual figures show that NHS jobs have risen by nearly 60,000 over 2008, following three quarterly rises.

“The NHS is the UK’s largest employer with 1.3 million staff, so any small percentage increase will translate into large increases in employment figures,” the spokesman said.

“Following the sizeable increases in NHS workforce numbers since 1997, we have now entered a period of more modest growth.We will have a much clearer viewpoint of staff increases when the 2008 NHS Workforce Census is published on March 25.”

Besides midwives, community matrons and school nurses, the increase in staff is likely to be made up of nurses, health visitors or other support staff, who make up the bulk of the NHS workforce.

In contrast, town halls have already started to shed thousands of posts and expect to reduce their workforces by up to 40,000 by the end of next year. About 6,000 posts have already gone in the past three months, mainly from back-office functions such as human resources and technology.

Margaret Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “It is a highly unpleasant decision for any council to cut jobs, but they also understand that local people are suffering. Councils are working hard to keep council tax down, to keep local businesses afloat and help people deal with the impact of the recession.”

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