It may be of comfort for the 30,000 people who lost their jobs in the private sector in the past fortnight to know there is work available if they have what it takes to be a “principal nuisance response officer” or an “integrated whole systems care pathway manager”. Such job descriptions exist only in the public bureaucracies that consume taxes and control our daily lives. In good times these jobs may have exasperated us but at least had the talent to amuse. In bad times, when the economic and fiscal outlook is close to catastrophic, they are unacceptable. Yet swathes of these jobs are being advertised when enfeebled public finances can least afford them.

It begs the question as to why government departments, local authorities and primary care trusts are being allowed to tap sums from the shrinking tax pot to create thousands of often meaningless posts - feather-bedded with job security, easy hours and generous pension entitlements. The new Labour salariat – more than 250 public sector posts have salaries bigger than the prime minister’s – should be throwing itself from the gravy train in penance instead of inviting more happy souls to hop aboard. Many public servants, of course, do valuable work. But all private organisations are slimming down by at least 10%. Is it too much to ask the public sector, with its 5.8m workforce, to show restraint?

Tomorrow Alistair Darling will reveal the contents of the most important pre-budget report since Gordon Brown introduced them in 1997. It is possibly more significant than any budget since the second world war. Mr Darling’s purpose is to fend off deflation and depression by getting people to spend again. Tax cuts are certain to be his principal weapon. So the public finances will fall even more deeply into the red. Within two years, government borrowing could reach a staggering £120 billion. Then taxes will have to shoot up again. How many nuisance response officers will be enjoying 37-hour weeks and final salary pensions in 2011? And how many private sector employees – with long hours and paltry pensions – will be paying the bill?

Mr Darling is expected to say the government is tightening its belt by selling off capital assets. This is unconvincing and foolish. Deep-pocketed institutions which have looked after their finances more sensibly than the government has may be keen to snap up the Forestry Commission or the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre at rock bottom prices in the hope of turning a tidy profit. But what difference will it make to a £120 billion hole in the public finances? Mr Darling and Mr Brown have no coherent plan. They are said to be privately pinning their hopes on the huge investment they have made in the UK banking system – with £60 billion of borrowed money – to provide the windfall that will save the day once the economic upturn comes. Mr Micawber would have been proud of them.

What Mr Darling should be announcing tomorrow is a culling of unnecessary public employment every bit as painful as that being suffered in the private sector. He should freeze all public recruitment. And he should find the courage to tackle the crippling burden of public sector final-salary pensions.

The government insists that its emergency measures will adhere to its “fairness agenda”. But it is unfair and foolish to go on cosseting and expanding the state bureaucracy while the private sector that finances it is in such pain. There was a time when a decent pension was a reward for a lifetime of low-salaried public service. Today’s well-paid bureaucrats should be forced into the real, cold world.