The huge recruitment drive under way in state bureaucracies ranging from local authorities to Whitehall departments will add the equivalent of 6p to the basic rate of income tax.
The figures, based on statistics released this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), will fuel concern about the huge expansion of Britain's public sector. Last year there were four times as many new jobs created by the state as there were by the private sector.
According to the analysis, by 2006 there will be 674,000 extra public servants — 13.6% more than the 4.9m Labour inherited from the Tories in 1997. At present the total number of public sector employees stands at 5.3m, one in five of the working population. The projected total of 5.6m by 2006 is bigger than the combined armed forces of China (2.8 m) and Russia (1.1m).
With average wages for public servants set to hit £28,490 by 2006 on current wage inflation levels, the total annual wage bill for the public sector is forecast to grow by Ï19 billion by 2006 because of the extra workers since 1998. That is more than double the £8 billion a year being raised by the extra 1% put on National Insurance in April.
The figures have been compiled by the Tories using data from the ONS and Treasury forecasts. Michael Howard, the shadow chancellor, yesterday accused Labour of overspending and of creating bureaucracies that were running out of control.
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"Despite the 60 tax rises they have imposed since 1997 and the hundreds of thousands of extra public sector jobs, hospital waiting lists are over a million, school truancy is up and violent crime has risen," said Howard. "All the extra money and extra jobs aren't delivering the improvements Labour promised because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are not reforming public services."
Critics accept that some of the jobs being created will go towards fulfilling the government's manifesto commitment to recruit more teachers, doctors, nurses and police. However, frontline jobs account for just half the increases. In the National Health Service, where 160,000 new staff have been taken on since 1997, nearly as many are new managers and other support staff as extra doctors and nurses.
Howard added: "After breaking Labour's record with more than six years in power this weekend, Tony Blair should be delivering the value for money which taxpayers have the right to expect."
Last month, a Sunday Times investigation revealed councils were creating a welter of dubious jobs at taxpayers' expense. One council was employing staff to take fathers on dry-slope skiing trips to help them bond with their children. Another was hiring a "protected learning time facilitator" whose task was to organise the temporary closure of GPs' surgeries for training they didn't want. A third advertised for "monitoring and evaluation" officers who themselves had to be monitored and evaluated.
While the public sector expands, 148,000 jobs were lost in manufacturing in the last quarter of 2002. In total only 3.7m people now work in manufacturing, the lowest number since records began in 1985 — and 1.6m less than those employed in the public sector.
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There are half a million civil servants in Whitehall alone, roughly equivalent to the number of people who work in the City. Public sector pay is also rising, adding to the growing tax bill. While average earnings increased by 3.7% in the year to December, public sector pay rises averaged 4.6%.
The projected rise in public sector jobs over the next three years was calculated by the Tories from ONS figures which show that public sector jobs rose by 354,000 between 1998 and 2002. Using government statistics, it can also be worked out that between 2002 and 2003 the total increased by another 120,000.
On top of that, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, said in his Budget that 70,000 jobs will be created each year until 2006, accounting for another 210,000 and a total increase of 674,000.