Finance to lead City of London hiring spree

A rise in City of London hiring is set to be driven by a boom in finance recruitment, new data shows.

The UK jobs market is continuing to improve. Successive pieces of economic data have shown more and more people getting into work. Even though wages have not yet begun to match the rate of rising employment, job-hunters still have plenty to smile about. New figures also show that the finance sector is likely to be at the forefront of this recovery.

The latest London Employment Monitor from Morgan McKinley shows that the availability of jobs in the City has improved from July 2014. Job vacancies jumped by a tenth between June and July. The improvement was even more marked over a longer period of time – 32 per cent more vacancies last month than in July 2013.

The search for higher wages has also played a part in growth – the average salary increase secured when people moved jobs was 20 per cent – up from 14 per cent recorded in the previous month.

But competition is also heating up – the recruitment firm reported a 40 per cent increase in the number of jobseekers month-on-month. Equally, this suggests that confidence is continuing to rise as professionals seek new opportunities and in turn, new vacancies are likely to arise as a result.

Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services, says that changes to the rules governing the UK finance sector have shaped the trend in recruitment.

“From a finance perspective, there has been a considerable uplift in product control and regulatory reporting roles at assistant vice-president and vice-president levels across the permanent and contract space,” he explained. “Regulation continues to drive this type of skill set in this area.”

However, Mr Enver added that the figures show City recruitment is “exceptionally buoyant” and that the rise in vacancies fits in with reports of the UK’s successful economic recovery.

Improvement in the labour market is being reported across the country, and graduates are among those expected to benefit. Indeed, BDO’s latest figures show that UK companies are recruiting at the quickest pace for 16 years amid a growing skills shortage.

The data also reveals that this year’s university leavers have the best employment prospects of any batch of graduates since the financial crisis hit.