If anyone had any doubt that the collapse of Wall Street would affect Main Street, it should have been dispelled by the latest employment figures, not just from the United States, but from around the world. Global job losses since the beginning of last year are approaching levels not seen since the Great Depression.

The US has shed 3.6 million jobs since January 2008, a figure that US House speaker Nancy Pelosi calls “dramatic and unprecedented”. She’s right: 2.7 million jobs were lost when the dotcom bubble burst and 1.6 million during the recession of 1990 to 1991. But both of those downturns were followed by fairly quick recoveries. That won’t be the case this time, says the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Its general secretary Guy Ryder warns that a further 50 million jobs will be lost worldwide in 2009, starting with the 20 million migrant workers just laid off in China.