CIPD issues jobs warning

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has warned that 2008 will be "easily the worst" year for jobs since 1997. The rise in total UK employment this year is expected to be a mere 0.25% or 75,000 jobs - a mere third of the level achieved over the last couple of years - and the extent of the hiring slump will remain uncertain as long as the credit crunch continues.

CIPD chief economist John Philpott (who featured in BBC1's national evening news bulletin on Friday 28th December) 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. This will be the worst year for jobs this decade and easily the worst since the Labour government came to power in 1997."