Bleak employment outlook for West Mids, says TUC
The TUC has warned that it is impossible to predict “when, if ever, unemployment will fall significantly” in the West Midlands. A report by the union congress said that the region “has seen no private sector employment growth over the last decade”.
The analysis shows that 1.3 million UK private sector jobs have been lost since the official figures for workforce jobs peaked at over 31 million in the second quarter of 2008.
With a 10 per cut in public sector employment to come, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), around 2.2 million private sector jobs will need to be created to get the labour market back to pre-recession levels, says the TUC.
The union has also warned that the number of workforce jobs in the UK could fall below 30 million for the first time since the start of 2003.
“When the spending cuts start to bite and public sector job losses begin in earnest the government tells us that the private sector can make up the difference,” said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber. “But there are already many people who have lost private sector jobs chasing every vacancy.
“And of course spending cuts will cause further private sector job losses, not just because the state will buy fewer goods and services, but those who lose their jobs will stop spending too. Even if the private sector does better than in the past, the spending cuts will condemn us to high unemployment for the foreseeable future.”
