By Sky News SkyNews - Friday, December 28 09:09 am
The forecast for new jobs in 2008 is the worst in a decade as private firms recruit fewer staff and the public sector cuts back, it is being claimed.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says in its annual end-of-year report that next year looks like being "easily the worst" for work since Labour came to power in 1997.
Employment will increase by just 0.25% over the next 12 months, well down on rises recorded in the past few years, according to the institute.
Its Chief Economist John Philpott said: "In the early part of the decade, periods of slower growth in private sector employment were masked by relatively rapid growth in public sector jobs.
"A downward trend in public sector employment in the past two years has in turn been more than offset by rising numbers of private sector jobs.
"But 2008 will be the first year for a decade that the engine of job creation will be spluttering right across the economy.
"With higher fuel costs and food prices set to raise the cost of living in the first half of the year the squeeze on real incomes experienced by many workers in 2007 will continue to bite in 2008."
He added: "Many HR professionals will be dusting off redundancy manuals in the coming months to re-discover best practice on trimming staffing levels.
"But unlike previous bouts of large-scale job shedding in the early 1980s and early 1990s, which tended to fall relatively heavily on older staff, redundancy practice in 2008 will have to take care not to fall foul of recently-introduced age discrimination legislation."
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