"divided and impoverished"

Unemployment has soared by 49,000 to 2.5 million with a record number of young people out of work. One in five 16 to 24-year-olds are jobless - 951,000 - the highest figure since records began in 1992. Employment levels have fallen, redundancies have increased and the number of people classed as economically inactive has reached 9.3 million.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said "It's misery for families, hit with a toxic cocktail of high inflation which is pricing them out of everyday living, and dwindling job opportunities. Meanwhile it's easy street for the bankers who caused this crisis, and are still making off with billions in bonuses."

Workers are worried about money and their jobs and are living under "tremendous pressure", according to a new study today.

Unite said a survey of 50,000 of its members showed that Britain is becoming "divided and impoverished" and increasingly forced into "insecure" working. As well as job losses, workers are also being hit by pay cuts and seeing an increasing number of agency staff being employed.

"With bankers lining up to line their pockets while workers worry about every penny, we are not all in this together." Unite's leader Len McCluskey said

Wall Street global banking giant Goldman Sachs revealed today that staff earned a total of 15.4 billion US dollars (£9.6 billion) in pay and bonuses last year - equivalent to around £270,000 per employee. The share of revenues paid out in salary and benefits for 2010 was up from 35.8% at 39.3%. The firm posted a 38% drop in net earnings to 8.35 billion US dollars (£5.23 billion) for the year to December 31. This followed a 13% decline in revenues to 39.16 billion US dollars (£24.51 billion).