Business lobbyist John Cridland is paid to defend tooth and nail his CBI members' right to make as much money as possible.

But his declaration that "the recovery is taking root and business leaders have a spring in their step" is in stark contrast to every set of economic data affecting ordinary people.

Behind the rose-tinted view is a story of permanent in-work poverty, personal despair, plummeting wealth and mass unemployment.

Cridland claims in his new year's message that pay will "pick up" in 2014.

He then parrots the perennial demand of the CBI for politicians to keep their nose out of business affairs, this time telling them to back away from any attempt to rein in the rampant exploitation of a million people on zero-hours contracts.

Away from Cridland's imaginary recovery the majority of the population is suffering.

The country's budget deficit remains well over £100 billion as tax take flatlines amid mass unemployment.

Yet the biggest businesses hoard £650bn in cash and refuse to invest it in growth, with private investment stagnant in 2013.

Tax-dodging global corporations ride roughshod over national governments, hoovering up our wealth but failing to pay back into the economy any share of the bounty.

Yet the government rewards them with lower taxation and a pat on the back.

Top City types whose greed caused the near collapse of capitalism in 2008 have returned to profit at ordinary people's expense and await bonuses that alone represent seven times the average annual wage.

Yet ministers have relentlessly passed the pain onto public-service workers who have faced massive real-terms pay cuts, mirrored for ordinary workers in the private sector.

Big private outsourcing companies such as Serco, G4S and Capita are hoovering up state contracts and transferring workers onto rock-bottom pay.

At the same time the government is slashing social security and creating a desperate underclass forced to work for peanuts.

And stark new figures from the Resolution Foundation and union GMB yesterday revealed the truth at the heart of Cridland's fantasy.

People's real-terms pay has plummeted by up to 49 per cent, and an average of 13.8 per cent across the board since 2008.

The cocktail of high debt and low wages has left a million people facing total economic destruction if interest rates rise even to a historically low 3 per cent.

This less than two weeks after figures revealing 2.3m officially classed as unemployed, 8.92m as economically inactive and 1.47m forced to work part-time because they can't find a full-time job.

This isn't a recovery, it's social Armageddon that will define the battle lines of a coming maelstrom.

Only massive public investment and a robust government-led economic strategy will have sufficient strength to create the growth necessary to reverse the decline in wages and put people's quality of life, including dignified parenthood and retirement, back at its heart.

Even as their fortunes improve the big business classes will do all they can to prevent any attempt to reverse this madcap right-wing onslaught.

Their representatives in Parliament will also do their utmost to prevent any major advance for ordinary people.

But the winds that they have unleashed will not subside.

It is up to the labour movement to act as a sail, giving political direction and focus as we face the inevitable storm ahead.