Public sector jobs cull rises to 730,000

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said 20,000 more public sector workers will lose their jobs by 2016-17, taking the total jobs cull to 730,000 over the next four years. In November, the OBR said the number of public sector losses would be 310,000 higher than the 400,000 redundancies it forecast at the beginning of 2011, taking the total to 710,000. But the OBR said many state employers had "front-loaded" redundancies in response to budget cuts and was confident the volume of job losses would tail off over the spending review period. Figures show about 80,000 public sector jobs were cut every three months between the first and third quarters of last year, but the OBR expects this to drop to 30,000 per quarter between 2012 and 2017.