A swathe of job cuts have been announced this week across industries at several high-profile companies, including online auction giant Ebay and tour operator Aer Lingus.
Ebay said yesterday it was making 10% of its workforce redundant – the equivalent of about 1,000 full-time employees – while at the same time acquiring three businesses, including a payments site and vehicles business. Hours later, Aer Lingus announced it would axe up to 1,500 jobs through redundancy and outsourcing as part of €74m (£58m) cost-saving programme.
Earlier today Wyndham Worldwide, the world’s second biggest hotel group by number of rooms, announced sweeping restructuring changes between now and April 2009 that would involve job cuts, although it would not disclose actual numbers, according to the Financial Times.
Over the weekend it emerged that Accenture UK, a consulting firm, had e-mailed thousands of staff late on Friday telling them it was to make up to 400 job cuts in the wake of the downturn.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has predicted that up to half a million jobs would go by the end of 2009.
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John Philpott, the institute’s chief economist, told Personnel Today: “Next year is going to be rough. We had thought that the jobs market might start to recover next year, but this delays that a bit. We could be looking at 2.25 million people being unemployed by the end of next year.”
Unemployment stood at 1.72 million in July, according to the Office for National Statistics.
