London job market still depressed
There's work out there for regulatory and risk experts
London’s financial sector jobs market continues to be depressed, with the number of new jobs on the market down 18% on this time last year, and the number of people looking for jobs down 26%.
The figures from recruitment specialist Morgan McKinley’s London Employment Monitor add up to a gloomy picture
“While a 76% increase in job availability may seem like a sign of an improving market, looking back at 2012, job availability fell to a real low across the City, and the 2,331 jobs in the market in January remains relatively low compared to 2010 and 2011,” said Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services. “This lowered level of job availability underlines research from the Centre for Economc and Business Research that forecasts that London is set to lose 13,000 financial services jobs this year.”
Enver said that regulations are still driving recruitment: “Adhering to regulatory change continues to be where the hiring market is busiest; compliance hiring is focused on anti-money laundering and prevention of financial crime following a number of high profile cases linked to global socio-economic problems such as organised crime and terrorism.” He added that the IT market is seeing demand for those with expertise in finance and risk to create more sophisticated reporting solutions.
The good news – for those moving from one job to another – is that the average salary hike for doing that was 24%. “We continue to see pay rising for those successfully landing new jobs each month, however in January 13, this was a particularly substantial uplift of 24%,” said Enver. “This level of increase was only seen a couple of times last year highlighting that despite the relatively low level of job availability across the City, where hiring is happening, it is focused on picking up the best people available in the market who are able to command strong salaries.”
