The forecast for new jobs in 2008 is the worst in a decade as private firms recruit fewer staff and the public sector cuts back, according to a report today.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said in its annual end-of-year assessment that 2008 looked like being "easily the worst" for jobs since Labour came to power in 1997.
Employment will increase by just 0.25 per cent over the next 12 months, well down on rises recorded in the past few years.
The institute's chief economist John Philpott said: "In the early part of the decade, periods of slower growth in private sector employment were masked by relatively rapid growth in public sector jobs.
"A downward trend in public sector employment in the past two years has in turn been more than offset by rising numbers of private sector jobs. But 2008 will be the first year for a decade that the engine of job creation will be spluttering right across the economy.
"With higher fuel costs and food prices set to raise the cost of living in the first half of the year the squeeze on real incomes experienced by many workers in 2007 will continue to bite in 2008.
"With jobs also harder to come by this could reinforce the impact of the economic slowdown, possibly necessitating bigger cuts in interest rates than currently anticipated to head off the threat of recession and a worrying prolongation of the slowdown into 2009."
The report warned that firms would have to deal with the "particularly tricky" task of handling compulsory redundancies in 2008.
"This will present a challenge to those human resources professionals who have not had to walk the tightrope of laying off large numbers of people, while ensuring that people who keep their jobs remain committed and motivated.
"Many HR professionals will be dusting off redundancy manuals in the coming months to re-discover best practice on trimming staffing levels.
"But unlike previous bouts of large-scale job shedding in the early 1980s and early 1990s, which tended to fall relatively heavily on older staff, redundancy practice in 2008 will have to take care not to fall foul of recently introduced age discrimination legislation."
Meanwhile thousands of workers will trawl the internet searching for a new job while they are away from the office on their Christmas break, according to a separate survey.
Research by online recruiters Jobsite.co.uk suggested that many people will use the time between Christmas and the New Year to check on job vacancies.
"Whether the office Christmas party was the final straw or the thought of going back to the office in the New Year is too much to tolerate, more than 70,000 of us will look for a job over the festive period," predicted Job-site career counsellor Cheryl Morgan.
"Christmas is usually considered a quiet time to look for a job, however similar to the advance of the January sales we are starting to see exciting new vacancies coming onto the market in December."
One in four workers is not happy in their current job and around half have a bad day at the office at least once a week, said the report.
Being in the wrong job causes stress, loss of sleep, headaches, exhaustion and depression, forcing people to use the festive break to look for a new start, it was suggested.
