Business leaders have suggested that companies could lose £1 billion from their profits and 350,000 could be made redundant as a result of the current economic downturn.
In a survey conducted by the Centre for Economic and Business Research and the Hay Group, bosses have a generally gloomy picture for the short-term future of the economy and employment prospects.
They forecast workforces will have to be cut by an average of 1.1 per cent, which rose to two per cent for financial services companies.
Businesses in the financial sector also predicted higher than average drops in profit, at an average of 8.4 per cent for this year.
In an indication of this trend, Credit Suisse announced on Monday that it is axing 75 jobs at its UK investment banking division.
Although the expectations for economic growth were low among business leaders, they also did not believe that the UK will hit a full-blown recession.
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