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This week has seen 1600 jobs disappear at major manufacturing companies in Northern Ireland. Here are a few that made the headlines:

• On Monday, Nortel in Newtownabbey made 87 people redundant.

• On Tuesday, the car components factory Visteon laid off the entire workforce of more than 200.

• On Wednesday, the engineering firm FG Wilson cut 95 posts.

• On Thursday, Bombardier Shorts in east Belfast announced that it to cut nearly 1,000 jobs.

As the recession takes hold, there signs are that there is more bad news to come.

Donna Traynor asks our Business Correspondent, Kevin Magee, just how bleak things could get for Northern Ireland's workforce.

The knock-on effect is greater than you would first think. Natasha Sayee, who's been talking to a worker the Visteon factory in Belfast, looks at the real cost to our economy.