Businesses in the UK took a flexible approach to reducing labour costs in the recession, according to data released by the Bank of England.

This approach meant that the rate of redundancies was much milder than the steep drop in national output, as firms implemented pay freezes and flexible working patterns rather than cutting jobs.

The Bank of England's quarterly bulletin revealed that employment fell by 1.9% over the past two years, several percentage points better than during the downturns of in the last two decades, despite GDP falling by 6.2%.