Oxfordshire has more than its fair share of public sector workers, particularly in the fields of education and health. But now, just as some were beginning to believe the Government’s claim that workers were transferring fairly smoothly from a declining public sector to an expanding private one, comes a profit warning from a leading provider of education technology employing 1,200 in Oxfordshire and 2,500 worldwide.

RM Education, based in Milton Park, near Didcot, the UK’s leading provider of educational technology, last week warned investors that profits “may be below the board’s previous expectations” — and immediately saw its shares drop 18 per cent.

A spokesman for the company would not comment on whether jobs were safe for the next 12 months — which focuses the spotlight fair and square on a group of skilled workers, particularly numerous in the Oxfordshire economy, that seems to have received relatively scant attention: namely those who are in the private sector but whose employers are dependent to a large extent on Government spending.

Public money for state schools is allocated on a per pupil basis with individual headmasters deciding how to spend it.

Now some City analysts reckon that, understandably enough, many are choosing to spend their money on retaining staff rather than such things as technology.

Chairman of the Oxfordshire Chamber of Commerce Nigel Wild agreed.

He said: “I am sure they are spending on staff rather then IT. But there is a threat in the longer term to jobs in the private sector which are dependent on public spending. And this must be watched carefully.”

He added: “Whichever way you look at it, money is tight. RM is an excellent company and has always done extremely well, but many other firms are affected, for example builders.”

RM’s financial statement came a year after the company was hit by Government moves to scale back or cancel unfinished Building Schools for the Future (BSF) projects, including seven for which RM was the preferred bidder in schemes worth £200m But ironically enough, building company Kingerlee in July last year told The Oxford Times that the scrapping of the BSF programme could actually benefit local builders.

Managing director Michael Puttick said then: “From our point of view the BSF programme has always been frustrating anyway. The trouble was that it was only open to large national contractors and we were not big enough to benefit.”

So how has the company fared with reference to gaining public contracts since then?

Mr Puttick said: “We still employ 125 — about the same number as a year ago. And we are still looking for those famous green shoots.

“We are doing some school building work for West Berkshire and in Buckinghamshire.

“Oxfordshire County Council, though, is now in the process of appointing an external company to manage its properties.

“Certainly there will be major refurbishment needed, and the necessity for some serious spending of money here when that process is complete, so of course we are ever optimistic. You have to be in this business. But it’s quiet at the moment.”

He added that in the meantime the company was increasing the skills of its workforce with an intake of graduates.

But back to RM. Its statement said: “Education market conditions continue to be difficult in the UK and the USA. Due to the seasonality of many of the group’s businesses it is difficult to predict accurately the outcome for the current period until after the summer.”

It also referred to factors that “should enable the group to adapt to the anticipated decline in education expenditure, although shareholders should anticipate a potentially difficult and unpredictable period in the near term.”

Now the company is undertaking a review of its operations but stressed that it benefited from an “unrivalled” market position in the UK.

Financial analyst Julian Yates, of Investec Securities, cut his profit forecast by 32 per cent to £13.8m but said he would be looking for further clarity on the funding outlook and potential changes in RM’s marketplace.

But one positive outlook for Oxfordshire workers, whether private or public sector, is that many are highly skilled and this could explain why rises in unemployment have been relatively modest here compared to elsewhere — just 1.8 per cent now out of work and claiming benefit — about half the national figure.

A survey from the Office for National Statistics released last week, which examined claimant counts since the UK unemployment low point of early 2005, found that: “In general the lower the skill level is required for the usual occupation, the higher the claimant proportion.

“For people whose usual occupation requires a low skill, the claimant proportion increased and then fell in the three-year period before the recession, and rose sharply during the recession.

“The other three job-skill groups showed less movement in claimant proportion between 2005 and 2008 and showed smaller increases during the recession than the low skill group.”

It also found that the south-east (which includes Oxfordshire) experienced the lowest increase in claimants (2.7 percentage points) in the country between January-March 2005 and March-May 2011.

So here is hoping that that situation is not about to change. But commenting on this week’s disappointing gross domestic product (GDP) figures, Andrew Sissons, researcher at think tank The Work Foundation, said: “These results will have serious consequences for the labour market.

“Over the last year, the economy has created over 300,000 jobs without any significant growth in output. This jobs recovery is very unlikely to be sustained without much stronger GDP growth over the coming months. Productivity per worker is not growing significantly, and that will continue to squeeze living standards.”

Hopefully that situation will change, particularly as he identifies knowledge-based services as the best hope for national economic recovery — at the heart of which lies Oxfordshire.