United Kingdom Prepares for Massive Job Cuts

As riots and protests were occurring across Europe today (incredible the lack of coverage by the U.S. media) the Guardian is reporting that Brits are preparing for massive job cuts.

From the Guardian:

At least 100,000 public servants will receive grim news over the Christmas holidays or soon after as councils, police forces and other public services race to meet a deadline of 1 January to formally announce job cuts.

An analysis of local authority documents reveals that the number of council redundancies directly resulting from the coalition's austerity measures is expected to break the 100,000 mark by early in the new year, fuelled by the swingeing cuts announced this week to councils' budgets and the pressure to start cutting before the new financial year in April.

This comes on top of the 33,000 drop in public sector jobs over the three months to October that was detailed yesterday in official unemployment data and is likely to lead to a torrent of "at risk" warning letters hitting doormats across the country in the next few weeks.

100,000 may not sound like a huge number (or maybe it does) when you first hear it but lets compare apples to applies. The population of the United Kingdom is 61.8 million. The population of the United States is 307 million or 4.96x bigger. So that is the equivalent to the United States government announcing 496,000 job losses in basically one day. Throw in the 33,000 government jobs already lost in the last couple of months which is the equivalent of 164,000 U.S. jobs and the United Kingdom is announcing the equivalent of 660,000 United States jobs losses in just a couple of months. That is a massive number and is akin to the United States losing 600k jobs a month at the depth of the Great Recession.

No wonder there were riots all over Europe today. If you did not see this video it is worth the watch. It is from Greece today.



This is the beginning, not the end. Why? Simply nothing at the foundational level has yet to be fixed in the United States or in Europe.