The public sector now employs a record 5.8 million staff, with 318 new positions being created every day – the equivalent of one every four-and-a-half minutes.
The ballooning number of taxpayer-funded jobs come as Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to unveil a punishing Budget to fund the public sector on Wednesday, while protecting its workers from the worst of her tax hikes.
Former Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the government’s policies including striving towards achieving net zero, will further increase the public sector.
‘It’s like a gravy train that won’t stop,’ he said. ‘This Budget is all about funding it. Taxpayers will suffer, because taxes will go up across the board.’
The number of public sector positions is now the highest since records began in 1999, according to analysis by the Taxpayers’ Alliance. The sector accounts for nearly 18 per cent of all UK jobs.
The ballooning number of taxpayer-funded jobs come as Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to unveil a punishing Budget
In the past year alone, 116,000 new public sector jobs have been created (stock image)
The public sector now employs a record 5.8 million staff, with 318 new positions being created every day (stock image)
In the past year alone, 116,000 new public sector jobs have been created – equal to 318 a day – while productivity has slumped more than 7.7 per cent over the past five years.
Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers will see this Budget for what it really is, which is a budget of the public sector, by the public sector, for the public sector.
‘While the rest of the country prepares itself for a devastating barrage of tax hikes, bureaucrats sit pretty knowing they’re bringing home the bacon. Rachel Reeves should be reminding her big-spending colleagues that only the private sector generates the revenues they rely on to fuel their profligacy.’
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, a former health minister, said: ‘We’ve added huge numbers of extra staff to the public sector but productivity has fallen.
‘The only time we saw productivity growth in the public sector was during tight controls on spending between 2010 and 2019.
‘There will be little point in Rachel Reeves borrowing loads of money, increasing taxes and throwing it at unreformed public services.’