The downturn in the housing market, where prices are falling at the fastest pace since the 1990s crash, could cost up to 100,000 jobs, according to an industry body.

"The house building industry has a huge multiplier effect on employment and the wider economy," Roger Humber, strategic policy adviser to the House Builders Association, a division of the National Federation of Builders, said.

"If major house builders continue to cut around 40 per cent of their workforce ... there will be further losses among those employed by thousands of smaller house builders," he said.

"(Also,) many more thousands of self-employed tradesmen and sub-contractors, building materials producers, manu- facturers of white goods, carpets, curtains, DIY, estate agents and solicitors will be affected." Research by Cambridge Econometrics during the last housing recession put total job losses in the region of 100,000 on the basis that 100,000 fewer houses were built per annum, or one house per worker per year. "We are heading in the same direction again," Humber said.

Major stockmarket-listed house builders have announced around 5,000 jobs cuts in the past fortnight to cope with the deepening depression in the housing market. Some, like Bovis Homes Group on Wednesday, are cutting 40 per cent of their workforce.

Bovis chief executive officer David Ritchie said the downturn has gathered pace in the past few weeks and now feels "an awful lot worse" than the last major correction in the early 1990s.