Disappointed banking job seekers in London reach 40,000 people
With the financial job market inevitably slowing down in the fourth quarter as bankers await next quarter’s bonus season before moving, it’s a good time for taking stock of how 2023 has been for those looking to move jobs so far. Courtesy of data from London recruitment consultancy Morgan McKinley, we can do exactly that.
Based on what it sees in the market itself, Morgan McKinley estimates the number of new jobseekers chasing new jobs in the London market. So far this year, it estimates that there have been 42,000 more jobseekers than jobs.
How does this compare to previous years? In the pre-COVID 'normal' years of 2017, 2018 and 2019, excess job seekers averaged 16,700 a year. Last year, however, there were 56,000 more jobseekers than jobs, so 42,000 might be presumed an improvement.
Morgan McKinley says the surplus jobseekers rose in the third quarter of this year compared to the second. At the same time, both the number of new jobs on the market and the number of new jobseekers both fell very slightly in tandem.
Morgan McKinley’s UK managing director, Hakan Enver, says the market is being kept alive by “business critical hires”, with over half of UK businesses still planning to hire in the next six months.
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This, coupled with the (on average) 20% increase in salary for those who find new jobs, show that “financial services firms are still prepared to offer the right salaries in a very tight and candidate short market,” he says.
Despite a decreasing number of jobs, the outlook for the future might not be so bad. Enver points out that warning confidence in the economy – which drove the slowdown in hiring – is being tempered by declining inflation “and the belief that interest rates have now reached their peak”. Nervousness about changing jobs, which is limiting both employers and employees, might be a thing of the past sooner than most expect. This also means there could be even more people chasing jobs in the future.
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