Nouriel Roubini: The US consumer will drag us back into recession

He added that that while US companies had relatively healthy cash levels, they were operating a ‘slash and burn’ policy on labour costs which made the need to generate large numbers of additional jobs fast.

‘We’ve lost 8.4 million jobs and if you include the loss of hours worked it is equivalent to another 3 million. We need to generate an extra 450,000 jobs every month for three years to get it back,’ he said.

His are the latest comments from a number of market commentators warning of a US -led double dip recession ahead.

SocGen's Albert Edwards, GMO's James Montier and Artemis Strategic Assets fund manager William Littlewood have all stated in recent days that a double dip is now very likely after a raft of generally disappointing US economic data.