IT’S a popular truism that who you are is most often measured by what you do for a living, your job. It determines your social status, your credit rating and your eligibility as a mate.

Possibly the cruellest aspect of recession is the effect on the labour market. While the population as a whole may be able to tighten its belt and adjust to the straitened times ahead, the real casualties are those who, for no reason of their own making, lose their status and livelihood.

And it’s indiscriminate. From Woolies to Nissan, Barclays to M & S, committed, hard-working individuals are facing the crushing reality of being deprived of their daily motivating activity and financial support.

Now I have always understood that a contract of employment is more than a signature on a pay slip; it is a bond between employer and employed. It’s a matter of trust, often with a financial pay-off: you put in a bit more for him, he exercises a duty of care for you.

And because, over time, you invest more in your job than just turning up for work, you therefore quite naturally feel aggrieved if it is taken from you, whatever the circumstances.

For which reason, fair and decent redundancy arrangements backed by legislation are designed to cushion the inevitable pain. However, it’s no good for either party to duck their responsibilities and expect a State bail-out if they have conveniently ignored the need to fund such provisions.

One upon a time things on the job front were all very clear and simple. There was the military, the church, medicine, manufacturing and all other services and activities supporting wealth creation. Well before the current downturn, as our manufacturing base with its huge call on people resources began to decline, all the effort that once supported the producers emigrated into supporting itself. And with fewer ‘real’ jobs to go round, invention and enterprise concentrated on creating ‘false jobs’, justifying them and according them importance.

This self-fulfilling displacement activity has blossomed into an industry actively engrossed in a never-ending diet of research, study or inquiry. Enter the regulators – Ofwat, Ofcom, Oftel , Ofsted, and now Ofqual – to check up on school marking standards. Watchdog this, watchdog that; so many kennels to pass through! Once-simple tasks now come with attendant form-filling and monitoring quite out of proportion with their worth. We have ‘targets’ set by those who don’t have to meet them, only for others to administer and check.

But who actually checks the checkers who can inflict untold damage and grief on their victims? Last year the Chief Constable of Essex was criticised by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary – a watchdog with a truncheon – because his tactic of investigating all reported crime, the job he and his force is actually paid to carry out, ‘is not always necessary and can be time-consuming’. So you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.

It really is ‘showtime for jobsworths’, and by some inexplicable quirk, we have allowed them to put in place a network of their own codes and regulations which prevents anything being done without their say-so. We are investing in abstract rather than actual progress. It’s Catch 22 and it’s crippling.

‘Think-tanks’ and quangos have sprung up everywhere, asking questions, holding seminars, issuing reports, setting guidelines – yet demonstrably falling short of actually offering solutions.

The professional bureaucratic code is ring-fenced and unbreakable. At its most rampant, it manifests itself thus: institutional prescription on the one hand, while on the other, there is a barrier of anonymity which protects against accountability.

I speak of a culture, and have absolutely no wish to imply that obfuscation and negativity are prerequisites for a career in the swelling ranks of the public sector. While other areas are contracting, government-funded employment provides a unique beacon of expansion. Town hall profligacy continues with opportunities for new graduates rising by 50 per cent last year, while jobs in the private financial sector declined by roughly the same figure.

The latest wheeze has been to create a raft of non-jobs for school leavers in an attempt to prevent them swelling unemployment figures. The National Ratepayers Association, a self-appointed watchdog, reckoned it could identify more than 15,000 PC-type non-jobs in the UK public sector last year with a salary bill of £600 million.

Faced with the current recession, councils up and down the country are claiming that they are, indeed, poised to shed jobs. Time, perhaps, to account for the latest rash of purpose-challenged lucrative activities. You have to ask what band of geniuses deserves credit for sitting around devising them.

Foot massages for wayward kids in east London, expensive diversity courses for civil servants, step-ladder training for the emergency services. There’s a street football co-ordinator attached to Moray Council, a community space challenger co-ordinator in Southwark , an enviro-crime enforcement officer in Lambeth, there is even a climate change manager in Braintree. All of which make our smoking control officer look rather respectable!

A while back I spotted a really tempting offer: Fareham Council is to spend an £80,000 grant from the National Lottery to teach children how to play. I thought they knew how to do it naturally. Well, apparently, no, and for £27,000 a year the job of play ranger could be yours – subject to satisfactory police checks, appropriate CV, annual playing targets, appraisal, etc, etc.

Just a minute … I see Colette Bowe, the new head of Ofcom, is set to get £200,000 a year for a three-day week. I’m free on Mondays and Fridays – last one to the Jobsworth Centre takes the biscuit!