Engineering giants Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems cut 2200 jobs today as the economic gloom deepened.

Rolls is to get rid of between 1500 and 2000 staff next year, up to 5% of employees, on top of the 2300 already shown the door since January. It refused to say how many of the fresh wave of redundancies will be in the UK but it could be more than 1000 as 60% of its 39,000-strong global workforce is based here.

But it did confirm 140 jobs will go at its assembly and test facility in Derby, its home of more than 100 years.

BAE is slashing 200 UK jobs following a decline in workload on the Ministry of Defence's Armoured Fighting Vehicle programmes.

The pair became the latest British companies to cull staff in the face of a prolonged recession, with more than 20,000 jobs cut in recent days. BT is shedding 10,000 staff while thousands more losses have been announced at firms including Yell, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Wolseley.

Rolls blamed its cutbacks on "current economic uncertainties" and delays to projects with Boeing and Airbus. Chief executive Sir John Rose said: "We are determined to maintain our focus on cost reduction and competitiveness as the world economy enters a challenging period.

"It is too early to determine the precise effects of the global economic downturn and programme delays. However, we wanted to give all our employees an early indication of the likely scale of the job reductions we expect in 2009."

Rolls said the cuts in Derby were the first stage of a programme to match the firm's size with its expected workload once the recession really bites.

Unions reacted with fury. Bernie Hamilton of Unite said: "This announcement is bitterly disappointing. Rolls must take a measured approach to this temporary downturn in the airline industry.

"In the past, the company has cut too many jobs and Rolls struggled to meet the upturn in the market. If there are to be redundancies in the UK they must be voluntary. Unite will not accept any compulsory redundancies."