Rat race: City workers scramble as new jobs numbers halve
City workers had to fight harder for new jobs last quarter as the amount of available opportunities halved.
Research shows that the number of available jobs decreased 50 per cent year-on year, and 33 per cent quarter-on-quarter.
Meanwhile, jobseekers fell by 22 per cent. It contrasts against the technology sector, which has 60 per cent more jobs in London today than it did in 2010.
It comes as the City is worried over the future of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, said Hakan Enver, the managing director at Morgan McKinley, who carried out the research.
“While most sectors in Britain have seen an increase in hiring despite the deadlock, the financial services sector is especially vulnerable to regulatory uncertainty and remains slow,” he said.
The amount of new financial services jobs on the market have declined fairly consistently from 24,105 in the beginning of 2017.
Last quarter the number of jobseekers lay at 7,363.
Meanwhile, the amount of professionals looking for new roles was 11,848 in the quarter.
Enver said that banks have been cutting jobs and putting projects on hold.
“If we have a no-deal Brexit, those projects and all the jobs they would have generated go from being on hold to being cancelled.”
“If those jobs keep being treated like collateral damage, eventually someone else is going to have to pick up the tab for the government’s expenses,” he said.
It comes more than eight in ten finance chiefs surveyed by Deloitte believe that the long-term business environment will suffer because of Brexit.
And the proportion of CFOs who believe that it is a good time to take more risk on their balance sheets has fallen to four per cent. This is the lowest since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.
“Brexit has not happened, but it is acting as a drag on corporate sentiment and spending,” said Deloitte’s chief economist Ian Stewart.
“Ironically, risk appetite in the corporate sector has slumped just as it has taken off in the equity market. Measures of financial market volatility have declined, even though a majority of CFOs rate uncertainty as being at high or very high levels,” he added.