City financial services job market index: December 2022

City financial services job market index: December 2022

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Executive Summary

There is no silver bullet when it comes to measuring demand in the U.K. financial services job market.

Over the years we have looked at everything from indices from recruitment agencies, aggregated job board data as well as government/ONS data. All of them are useful indicators but fail to offer an accurate reflection of what’s happening across Financial Services as well as individual and significant sub-sectors.

The City Career LAB & Rialto job market index captures data directly from corporate careers sites as a way of measuring jobs activity – specifically demand. It’s not perfect*, but is perhaps the most accurate indicator of hiring demand in the U.K. financial services jobs market.

Each month we collect and analyse data from a broad and diverse basket of handpicked employers that represent a particular sub-sector of Financial Services in the U.K.

The results which include all permanent and fixed term contract positions across all functions of the chosen organisations will be published on our joint websites and LinkedIn – to show and explain the direction of the hiring market(s) from month to month.

Other observations as follows:

• December is the seventh month in a row when hiring demand has dropped in UK Financial Services with quite significant drops being recorded in each of the last five months.
• There has also been a large drop off in demand Year-on-Year with the volume of open roles down by 36% versus December 2021.
• For once, every single sub sector of UK Financial Services that we track is heading in the same direction(i.e. downwards) with the biggest fallers being Banking & Markets and Investment Management with Month on Month drops of 21% and 17% respectively.
• Whilst December is never a busy month in terms of hiring demand, coming on the back of a steady drop off since the summer, these numbers underline how the FS jobs market is undeniably in a ‘recession’.
• When I look at things at the individual employer level, I notice another theme. American employers have cut their open jobs far more aggressively than their UK, European or Asian counterparts – almost without exception. However, I don’t believe this is about contrasting economic realities. My experience of U.S. based employers has taught me that they tend to take firmer action (and faster) at the first sign of trouble.

As a reminder – the Job Market Index is intended to be the most accurate read on hiring demand in the UK financial services sector.

The indicators show;

Banking & Markets: Corporate & Investment Banking, Markets, Securities Services (excl. Consumer/retail) -21%
Investment management: Asset Management, Alternatives -17%
Insurance: General, Life, Reinsurance, Broking -6%
Wealth & Private Banking -6%
Fintech: Banking, Lending, Payments, Insurtech, Crowdfunding -4%
Information Services: Data Providers, Ratings Agencies, Risk Analytics -12%