British companies have cut more than 24,000 jobs over the past week, after Rolls-Royce, AstraZeneca and BAE Systems this morning added to the growing tally of unemployment.

Rolls-Royce said today that between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs will be lost over the next year, with 140 expected to go at its assembly and test facility in Derby. The aerospace engineer employs 39,000 workers globally, and 60 per cent of its workforce is based in the UK.

AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceuticals company, said it planned to cut 1,400 jobs and close three factories in Europe as part of a programme to improve efficiency. About 250 jobs in Macclesfield and Sweden are likely to be affected.

The factories earmarked for closure are in Spain, Belgium and Sweden and the jobs will be lost there by 2013.

A further 200 jobs will go at BAE Systems, at factories in Newcastle, Leeds, Leicester, Barrow and Telford. The company, which blamed the cuts on declining workload on the Armoured Fighting Vehicle Programme for the Ministry of Defence, said it would launch a voluntary redundancy programme immediately.

Falling sales and rising investor withdrawals from unit trusts have prompted Fidelity International, the fund manager, to cut 300 jobs.

Daily Mail and General Trust, the newspaper and information publisher, this morning said that 400 jobs had been lost across the group over the past two months as part of previously announced cost-cutting measures.

Today's announcements bring the total number of jobs cut by British companies since last Wednesday to more than 24,000.

Last week, BT announced that 10,000 jobs would go. The Royal Bank of Scotland is to cut 3,000 jobs, Virgin Media 2,000 and the closure of a GlaxoSmithKline factory in Kent will result in 620 losses.

Earlier this week Wolseley, the construction company, announced a further 2,000 jobs, on top of previous reductions. Citigroup also announced that 52,000 jobs would go worldwide, of which 2,000 are expected to be lost in the UK.

Last week, unemployment hit an 11-year high of 1.82 million. On Monday the CBI predicted that unemployment could peak at close to 2.9 million next year.

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