City jobs market shows early signs of recovery
HIRING in the City has fallen sharply over the last year – but the decline in recruitment appears to have stabilised, Astbury Marsden said today.
The recruiters estimated there were 3,585 financial services vacancies last month, down 38 per cent on the 5,800 available in the same month of 2011.
Tough economic conditions are to blame for the fall over the past year, with the Eurozone crisis having a particularly strong impact.
However, the jobs market improved strongly in January and has stabilised in February, according to Astbury Marsden’s Mark Cameron.
“January prompted an unexpected rise in City job vacancies as a result of pent up demand for City staff from the latter stages of 2011. February has been more subdued, but with fears of a double dip receding, we have started to see more consistent demand over the last couple of weeks,” he said.
“Although the pace of jobs growth has slowed in February, we are seeing continued appetite from some of the smaller banks and more specialist City firms to hire.
“They are keen to take advantage of the abundance of talent on the market and move into some of the territory vacated by the big banks.”