New research from the communications watchdog, Ofcom, highlights that only groceries and personal care products are more important than access to the Internet.

Peter Phillips, Ofcom’s partner for strategy and market development, said “Despite the recession, people are spending more time using mobile phones and accessing the Internet”.

Currently, 68 percent of the UK have broadband access to the Internet compared with 58 percent this time last year. Consumers spent an average of 25 minutes a day using the internet in 2008, compared to just nine minutes in 2003. But the average cost of internet use dropped from £11.37 in 2007 to £10.71 in 2008.

Ofcom said costs are being driven down by increased competition and more consumers opting for “bundle deals” which offer telephone, broadband and TV subscription. The report showed 46pc of consumers buy two or more services from one supplier, up from 39pc a year earlier.

Asked what expenses would be cut in the face of recession, 47 percent of consumers said dinners out, 41 percent said going on holiday and 25 percent buying new clothes.

But only 10 percent said they would cut back on broadband.

Mr Phillips said the biggest “phenomenon” was the staggering growth of mobile broadband, with 139,000 new connections in May alone. More than one in 10 households has a mobile broadband connection, less than a year since it became widely available.

The rise of the internet, particularly music streaming like Spotify, appears to be killing radio, which has seen a 21pc drop in listeners under 16 over the past five years.

This news will be welcomed by businesses and entrepreneurs who have invested time and money in educating their staff how to use the web more effectively.

Almost two thirds of the 410 businesses polled from eBay’s top 2,000 sellers list said they were confident about the future and more than three quarters planned to expand their business this year.

Mark Lewis, eBay’s UK manager, said this confidence was based on their robust sales performance over the past year, with the average from his top 1,000 sellers hitting 29pc growth in the last quarter of 2008, up from 23pc in the same period of 2007.

Mr Lewis said these online trading businesses were still “bucking the trend” of stagnant retail sales on the high street. Some 54pc expected rising sales, while 30pc expected static sales this year.

These expectations were supported by the monthly IMRG Capgemini online retail sales index, published last week, which showed that year- on-year sales grew 13pc in February.

Mr Lewis said: “They are growing at a rate that is bucking the trend. Not only are they growing faster than retailers in general but they are accelerating.”

According to the survey, which covered businesses that trade online via eBay, other platforms like Amazon and their own websites, most online traders still focus on the UK market.

Almost 90pc of the sales by the top 1,000 sellers on eBay were conducted with UK customers. European customers represented 9.4pc of total sales, with other countries representing less than 1pc.

Mr Lewis said smaller traders still found it difficult to negotiate barriers to trade, like different consumer protection laws, operated by different countries, even across the EU.

Construction output tumbled 4.9pc over the quarter, revised down from a fall of 1.1pc. The ONS said this was due to survey data replacing a forecast.

The decline is the biggest quarterly fall in construction output since the fourth quarter on 1980.

Output of the production industries fell 4.5pc compared with a fall of 1.8pc in the previous quarter, driven by the marked decline in manufacturing output.

Separate figures showed Britain’s current account deficit narrowed to £7.641bn in the fourth quarter of 2008 from an upwardly revised deficit of £8.162bn in the third quarter.

Sterling fell against the euro on Friday as it continued to suffer the fallout from Thursday’s weak retail sales figures. High street sales plunged by 1.9pc during February, taking annual growth down to just 0.4 percent, its weakest since 1995

Following that theme, John Lewis – the department store group whose sales are often seen as a barometer of British retail spending – reported on Friday sales dropped by 12.6pc in the week to March 21.

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According to comScore, the top growing online product category for the season was Sport & Fitness, which grew 18 percent versus year ago. The category continues to benefit from consumers’ focus on health and fitness and consumers feeling more comfortable purchasing higher-priced fitness equipment, such as treadmills and elliptical machines, online. The second fastest-growing category was Video Games, Consoles & Accessories, which grew 14 percent on continued demand for popular consoles, such as the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Apparel & Accessories, the only other product category with positive online growth, generated higher sales as a result of retailers’ aggressive discounting and promotions, and helped by unfavorable weather across much of the country.

Job centre queue

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) said there had been a continued weakness in the labour market in recent weeks, with job vacancies falling at record levels.

Increasing numbers of workers being made redundant was coinciding with fewer new job opportunities becoming available.

There were sharp increases in the number of people looking for permanent and temporary work, a study found.

The report also noted a shift in bargaining power towards employers, with average salaries for successful candidates placed in permanent jobs falling for a fourth successive month in January.

The rate of decline in pay was the fastest since data collection started in 1997, while hourly pay rates for temporary staff was also down sharply.

Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, said: “These figures continue to cause real concern and confirm that the labour market is continuing to contract, although the decline in permanent placements is less marked than in the previous month.

“The Government needs to breathe life into the jobs market, for example by harnessing the contribution of temporary work as a valuable mechanism for keeping people in employment.

“This means extending the employer incentives announced at last month’s jobs summit to take on and train temporary staff. It is also important that any steps to boost the jobs market are not undermined by potentially damaging legislation. In particular, the Government’s plans to introduce a tax on some temporary work from April must be delayed if we are to avoid even more jobs being lost at this critical time.”

Mike Stevens, of KPMG, which helped with the research, added: “Yet another month of desperate news on the UK employment front although there is a perceptible slowing in the rate of decline in permanent placements.

“Most employers are now looking at ways to cut cost to mitigate falling sales revenues. High on the list of costs, for what has largely become a service economy, is wages.”

Sir David and Sir Patrick Barclay have bought the much-loved chain along with Ladybird, the childrens brand it owned, for a price of “more than £1″, according to Mark Newton Jones, CEO of the Shop Direct group, the Barclays’ shell company used for the acquisition.

However, it is unlikely any staff who were based at the Weston-super-Mare store will retain their jobs, as only a fraction of the 30,000 workforce are expected to be kept on.

The High Street store closed and 65 people were laid off on December 27 after company bosses announced debts of £300million.

The twins, who also own the Daily Telegraph, will add the Woolworths brand aloongside Great Universal and Marshall Ward in their Shop Direct group.

The number of tax advisers, commercial pilots and underwriters out of work and claiming benefits has also more than doubled in a year, according to the Office of National Statistics. Economists believe top earners who escaped the full brunt of previous recessions are among those hardest hit now.

“In the 1980s it was blue-collar unemployment; in the 1990s it was white collar unemployment,” said Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors. “In this recession we’re seeing something new: high-income unemployment.

“These are individuals with nice houses and two children in private schools who are suddenly seeing their standard of living plummet. This will be one of the hallmarks of this recession”.

More than 1.1m people were out of work and claiming benefits by the start of December – up from 787,000 a year earlier.

Middle-aged workers are among the biggest victims.  There has been a 30% rise in unemployment among the over-fifties in the last quarter of 2008, while joblessness between 25 to 49-year-olds rose by 5%.

Following is the full list of occupations affected by the recession

The survey found that 81.6 percent of workers are interested in starting a business, 7.6 percent of whom are determined to do so.

Of these potential entrepreneurs, 15.2 percent said they are thinking of making a change because their employment situation is not good. However, the two reasons the respondents mentioned most frequently for wanting to start a business were a desire to live the life they want and to realize their dreams.

The results showed that older workers, especially those in their 50s, are most likely to turn to entrepreneurship because of unemployment, with 26.6 percent of workers in this age group saying that losing their jobs was what gave them the urge to start a business.

Some 23.3 percent of respondents interested in entrepreneurship plan to move in that direction within one year, 22.5 percent intend to do so in one to two years, 19.9 percent in two to three years, and 34.4 percent in three years or more, according to the survey.

The survey also revealed that older workers tend to be more proactive in trying to put the idea into practice.

More than 53 percent of respondents in their 40s and 40 percent of those in their 50s are planning to start a business within one year, compared to 24.6 percent of those in their 30s and 15.1 percent of those in their 20s.

On average, the potential entrepreneurs would require £11,500 in startup funds, the survey found.

As to the kinds of business they what to run, 39.4 percent expressed interest in coffee shops, restaurants or snack bars, and 39.1 percent indicated a preference for operating an online business.

Nearly 40 percent of the potential entrepreneurs are optimistic that they can make a profit in six to 12 months after start-up, and 23.7 percent expect a gain within six months.

Meanwhile, among the respondents who have no desire to go into business, 61.5 percent think starting a venture in times of economic recession is a risky undertaking.

Other reasons mentioned by this group of respondents included a lack of capital, lack of personal qualities to run a business, and lack of any special expertise.

The survey was conducted Jan. 19-23 among 7,632 members of the job bank. It had a margin of error of 1.12 percent.

Consumers also felt the pain asa the number of bankruptcies last year soared to the highest level since records began nearly 50 years ago.

The total number of businesses going bust, which covers administrations and liquidations, rose by more than 50 per cent as increasing numbers of firms struggled to access finance or secure insurance. But experts warned that the figures were set to rise higher in the coming year.

Malcolm Shierson, Partner at Grant Thornton’s Recovery and Reorganisation practice,aid “These numbers are bad, but they are going to get progressively worse as business and consumer confidence continues to fall.”
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“Companies across all sectors will struggle when they need to refinance their debt as lenders rein back on corporate lending. On top of this, the arteries of business are being clogged up as credit insurers cut back on the provision of cover for suppliers and contractors.”

Some 2,018 businesses entered into administration — the insolvency scheme usually used by larger companies — between October and December last year, up from 575 in the final quarter of 2007, figures from the Insolvency Service show.