Figures released today by the Office for National Statistics show local government has again borne the brunt of public sector job losses in the first three months of 2013 – scrapping a further 26,000 posts while central government employment levels increased by 13,000.

Overall UK public sector employment decreased by 22,000 to around 5.7 million workers while private sector employment increased by an estimated 46,000 to more than 24 million, today's statistics show.

Levels of public sector employment are roughly 10% lower than their peak in the third quarter of 2009 – although part of this fall is because of the reclassification of English further education and sixth form colleges to the private sector.

Part of the fall in local government employment and the increase in central government workforce can be explained by the acceleration of the academies schools programme – which removes teachers and staff from local authority control to central government oversight and classification.

Headcount reductions continued in the civil service, with the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions contributing to the bulk of redundancies.

Last week the influential Institute for Government think-tank suggested Whitehall will only just meet its target headcount of having a 380,000 strong workforce by 2015 if the current rate of job-losses is maintained. 

At the same briefing, Carl Emmerson, deputy director for public finance economists the Institute for Fiscal Studies said there were 410,000 fewer public sector workers in December 2012 than December 2010. 

However, Mr Emmerson said although independent forecasters the Office for Budget Responsibility predict government employment would decrease by 1 million between 2010/11 to 2017/18, departments plan to cut their paybill faster by the end of the current spending review period.

This, he said, would imply a further 150,000 job losses by 2017/18 – rising to 250,000 if wage trends continue.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: 'Local government has been one of the areas hardest hit by the Government's austerity agenda.

‘While all these job losses are personal tragedies, they also mean that people who rely on services will find them getting scarcer and scarcer. The impact on local economies is dire. None of this bodes well for the economy.'