As certain as death and taxes are the deep cuts to come. Whoever is in power, the axe will fall. But where, how soon and how cruelly will depend on who wins the election. Labour, unwisely, is giving a premature foretaste with Peter Mandelson’s university cuts. But David Cameron and George Osborne, whatever their jittery differences in pre-election language, are pledged to consign considerably more public employees to the dole than Labour is, tipping yet more private sector employees out of work as they go. In this worst recession since the 1930s, with 5% of the economy wiped out permanently, and years before output creeps back to where it was, unemployment should be far worse than in the early 80s recession. Based on previous recessions the predictions were that, by now, at least 3 million would be on the dole. Yet look at the comparison with the 80s. Back then, though growth restarted in 1981, unemployment kept soaring upwards long afterwards, reaching a peak of 3.3 million in 1986, some 12% of the then working population. Yet in this far worse recession only 2.46m – 7.8% of the working population – are out of work. True, January’s figures, published next… Read full this story
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