SHOCK figures revealing that 2,000 public-sector jobs are being lost in the region every month have sparked calls for the Government to halt the cull.

Ministers were warned that the scale of the losses was dwarfing predictions, while the private sector is failing to create jobs because the economy is in “such a fragile condition”.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said the result was rising unemployment and benefit bills, blowing a hole in the Government’s strategy to cut the gaping budget deficit.

Across England, 104,000 Government jobs were lost in the three months between April and June – five times the 20,000 projected for the entire 2011-12 financial year by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

• 6,000 public-sector jobs were lost in the North-East between April and June – and 10,000 were lost in Yorkshire.

• 16,000 public-sector jobs were lost in the North-East – one in every 18 employees – between July last year and June 2011. Seventeen thousand jobs were lost in Yorkshire.

• The losses since July last year were 5.4 per cent of public- sector jobs in the North- East and 3.1 per cent in Yorkshire.

• In England, 104,000 Government jobs were lost between April and June and 111,000 in the public-sector as a whole.

• Between April and June, only 41,000 private-sector jobs were created – little more than a third of the 111,000 jobs lost.

Meanwhile, the biggest ever union strike ballot was launched yesterday, with more than a million public sector workers urged to back industrial action in a bitter row with the Government over pensions.

Members of Unison, including probation officers, nurses, social workers, teaching assistants, dinner ladies and hospital cleaners, will vote during the next few weeks on whether to join a strike on November 30, predicted to be the biggest outbreak of industrial unrest seen in the UK.

Commenting on the large scale of public sector job losses, Dr John Philpott, chief economic advisor at the CIPD, said: “Public sector job cuts in this context are a false economy.

“A more sensible course would be to delay public sector job cuts to the end of this parliament and, if necessary, into the next, thereby enabling them to be absorbed more easily without nasty macroeconomic side-effects.”

Neil Foster, policy and campaigns officer at the Northern TUC, said: “Rising unemployment and a lower tax take means that these cuts represent a complete false economy.

Just how bad does it have to get before ministers see sense?”

But the Treasury quickly ruled out changing course, insisting the cuts were necessary for economic growth and to ensure “record low interest rates for families”.

A spokesman said: “Risks in the global economy make it even more essential to stick to the Government’s essential deficit reduction plan, which is supported by the International Monetary Fund.”

The CIPD also warned that it now expected more than 600,000 public sector jobs to go by 2015-16 – a third more than the OBR’s projection of 410,000.

The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics, reveal that 534,000 private- sector jobs were created in 2010-11, easily mopping up the 157,000 lost from the public- sector.

But that picture has been turned on its head since April, with 111,000 posts disappearing from the public-sector – and only 41,000 added by private companies.

Before last year’s General Election, David Cameron made headlines when he warned that the level of public spending in the North-East was “unsustainable” and must be reduced.

The statistics show that only the South-West (5.9 per cent) lost a higher proportion of its public-sector jobs in the first year of the Coalition than the North-East (5.4 per cent).

Meanwhile – as The Northern Echo revealed – not a penny has yet been paid out from the flagship £450m Regional Growth Fund, five months after 14 job-creating projects were approved.

The CIPD report, called Public Sector Job Cuts Revisited, was published ahead of tomorrow’s unemployment figures.

Joe White, Unison branch secretary at Darlington Borough Council, said: “The job cuts are the result of some very, very tough economic circumstances and, as usual, it’s the people at the bottom who take the brunt.”