Much ado about the Guardian’s scoop this evening: a leaked Treasury document which forecasts that up to 1.3 million jobs could
be lost as a result of the spending cuts in the Budget. Or, to put it in the words of the document itself:
You can expect Labour to get stuck into these numbers, and the fact that they were previously hidden from public view, with no uncertain relish. Ed Balls has already described them as “chilling”. But it’s worth making a couple of points, by way of context:“100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts.”
i) There’s job creation too. The Guardian goes onto report that “The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze.”
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