On a sunny but frosty December day in the City of London, Paul Collins is waiting outside an employment agency. The recent graduate is one of the victims of the recession sweeping across Europe: he lost his temporary administrative job in the headquarters of a large multinational company.

“It wasn’t that long since we had been hired,” he says, shivering in the morning cold. “But then suddenly they announced that a big part of the temps were to be let go.”