(FT) -- British Finance Minister George Osborne will on Wednesday usher in the "sober decade" when he announces an £83 billion ($130.3 billion) package of spending cuts that will transform the British state and force hundreds of thousands of public sector workers to seek new jobs in the private sector.
Osborne's long-awaited spending review is expected to herald the loss of 490,000 public sector jobs by 2014-15 -- a snatched photograph of a Treasury briefing document confirmed -- and hardship for those who remain.
Pay for most public sector workers will be frozen for two years, while their average pension contributions could rise by up to 3 percentage points -- an effective pay cut -- to save the taxpayer billions of pounds.
The chancellor's austerity package was praised in advance on Tuesday night by Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, who defined "S.O.B.E.R." as meaning "a decade of savings, orderly budgets and equitable rebalancing".
Some 35 company bosses insisted this week that the private sector would be able to absorb this tide of refugees from the public sector; if they are wrong, the coalition could pay a heavy political price.
The wave of job losses was set in train on Tuesday when Prime Minister David Cameron announced 42,000 posts to go in defence -- part of an overall 8 percent round of military cuts -- while Channel 4 News reported 14,000 jobs to go at the Ministry of Justice.
CNN
