This ‘jobs-light' recovery is one of three possible scenarios put forward in the CIPD report, Jobs: The Impact of Recession and Prospects for Recovery, published this week.
The second scenario, a jobs-lined recovery, would require a strong and sustained rebound in global demand and investment enabling employers to create jobs, resulting in a strong and early rise in employment and a return to the pre-recession rate of unemployment by the end of 2012.
The third is the most pessimistic: a jobs-loss recovery, where weak and uncertain economic recovery could result in cutbacks with recruitment and unemployment continuing to rise well beyond 2010 to a peak of at least 3.5 million and no prospect of a return to the pre-recession rates for at least a decade.
Commenting on the outlook for jobs, John Philpott, chief economist at the CIPD, said: "Unless the economy rebounds from recession far more strongly than most economists expect the likelihood is that the recovery will be broadly jobs-light, resulting in a slow grind back toward the pre-recession rate of unemployment. And while a jobs-loss recovery is not the most likely scenario it remains a distinct possibility, which means it is of vital importance that the Government, the Bank of England, and their counterparts abroad, maintain expansionary fiscal and monetary policies for as long as necessary."
On a slightly brighter note the report found that there had been a much lower ‘job distress ratio' than had been suffered in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. Had previous UK experience been repeated it is likely that around half a million more jobs would have been lost.
This will offer little comfort to those who have been casualties of the recession. Another finding of the report was that the biggest losers in the recession as far as jobs are concerned have been men, full-time employees, people at both ends of the age spectrum, blue collar and unskilled workers, UK born workers, and private sector workers. The West Midlands sector was seen as the UK's main regional unemployment black spot.