Lloyds Cuts 4,500 More Jobs; British Employment Picture Worsens
London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – Employment in Britain continues to be bleak amid reports of job cuts by a major British bank, a rise in jobless benefits claims and a forecast of more lay-offs.
On Wednesday, Lloyds Banking Group announced it would cut 4,500 more jobs. To be affected by the financial institution’s restructuring program are employees in the IT division. With the fresh round of lay-offs, the total number of Lloyds workers who have lost their jobs since the bank merged with HBOS in January 2009 is 22,000.
To worsen the situation, Lloyds may make more job cuts since the bank is only in the middle of a three-year integration program scheduled to end this year.
Of those who would lose their jobs in the latest cuts, 1,600 are permanent employees, 1,150 temporary and 1,750 contractual workers. About 90 percent of the permanent workers who would lose their jobs are from the HBOS sites in Edinburgh, Halifax, Leeds and Chester.
Trade union Unite criticized the job cuts because Lloyds reported a first half profit of $2.4 billion (1.6 billion pounds) and is still pursuing a cost-cutting program.
Unless the Lloyds workers soon find other jobs, they may join the ranks of jobless benefits claimants whose number rose by 5,300 in September. According to the Office of National Statistics, the rise in job benefits claims – the largest increase since January – brings the total number of claimants to 1.47 million.
But the worse is yet to come, consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted in a study. According to the firm’s research, about 500,000 Britons in the private sector could lose their jobs in the next four years because of the $124.5 billion (83 billion pounds) cut in public spending by the coalition government.
For the same period, the private sector is still expected to generate 1 million new jobs in the outsourced business services and social care sectors, but business services will lose 180,000 jobs and construction 100,000 jobs.
The study forecasts job sector losses in private and public sectors will reach 5 percent of the total workforce in Northern Ireland, 4 percent in Wales, Scotland and the North East, and a larger number in London and the Southeast.
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