Sainsbury’s is to cut 3,000 jobs in the UK through the closure of its hot food counters and cafes and by reducing senior management roles by a fifth, amid rising labour costs.

Simon Roberts, the chief executive of the supermarket group, said he was making the job cuts as part of its already announced efforts to slash £1bn from costs as the business was “facing into a particularly challenging cost environment”.

“We have had to make tough choices about where we can afford to invest and where we need to do things differently to make our business more efficient and effective,” he added.

The job losses came after Britain’s largest retailers warned they could be forced to cut thousands of roles and raise prices this year as a result of measures in Labour’s budget to increase employer national insurance contributions by a projected £25bn and raise the national minimum wage by 6.7%.

Sainsbury’s did not explicitly state that increase in employers’ national insurance was behind the job cuts, but the £140m addition to its wage bill from April is understood to be a contributing factor.

After the announcement by Sainsbury’s, a Downing Street spokesperson said that “difficult decisions” in the budget would help pave the way for economic growth.

Paul Travers, the national officer for food at the Unite union, said: “Once again, the lowest paid workers are paying the price for corporate greed. Sainsbury’s is a hugely profitable company and made over half a billion pounds in profit last year.”

Asked how the government would respond to suggestions that layoffs at the supermarket were influenced by the budget, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “Growing the economy, backing businesses, putting more money in people’s pockets are obviously the priority.”

Sainsbury’s will close remaining patisserie, hot food and pizza counters, shifting the most popular items into regular shopping aisles and offering “self-serve” bread slicing.

It will also close all 61 remaining Sainsbury’s branded cafes, subject to consultation. Explaining the move, it said: “The majority of Sainsbury’s most loyal shoppers do not use the cafes regularly and cafes and food halls run by specialist partners are becoming more and more popular.”

The chain, which employs 148,000 people, has almost 600 supermarkets and more than 800 convenience stores.

Most big supermarkets reported good trading over the festive period. Sainsbury’s, which also owns Argos and Habitat, said earlier this month it had had its “biggest ever Christmas”, with sales up by 3.8% in the six weeks to 4 January. Sales at its Argos stores rose 1.1% in that period.

However, the UK grocery industry trade body IGD said on Thursday that supermarket sales had fallen, if inflation was excluded, and it was “hard to envisage sustained strong growth in the UK economy or in household prosperity over 2025”.

It also increased its prediction for grocery price inflation to as much as 4.9% in 2025, from a previous estimate of 4% that it put out only last month.

Sainsbury’s is also reorganising office departments to create “fewer, bigger roles with clearer accountabilities”. It said the changes would “drive faster decision-making and bring costs down” by reducing the number of senior management roles by 20% over the next few months. Jobs are expected to go at its offices in London and Milton Keynes.

The latest closures announcement came nearly three years after Sainsbury’s closed 200 in-store cafes and 34 hot food counters as part of a shake-up that put 2,000 jobs at risk.

The company said it would aim to redeploy workers where possible and offer a support package to those affected.