UK: 17,000 Jobs Lost So Far This Week

BT's announcement on Thursday of plans to axe 10,000 jobs has taken the total redundancies announced by UK companies this week to over 17,000. Redundancies at BT and JCB, which is cutting 400 jobs, follow revelations of 2,200 job losses at Virgin Media, 1,000 at Taylor Wimpey and 1,300 at Yell. Many of the job cuts were blamed on the recession, while some, such as those at BT and Virgin Media, were attributed to long-overdue restructuring.