Morgan McKinley’s latest Winter Recruitment report, which details hiring trends in London’s financial sector, says the number of jobs available in the financial sector increased by 40% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to reported at the same time in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the economy and put the labor market on hold.
More than 32,000 finance jobs were created in London last year, around twice as many as in 2020, buoyed by a spike in the second quarter as Britain’s vaccination program saw more people to return to the office.
“Overall, employment numbers continued to reflect an encouraging recovery from the impact of Brexit, the furlough scheme, the pandemic and lockdowns,” said Hakan Enver, managing director at Morgan McKinley. He added that growing investment in fintechs London has helped.
Half of the economic output of the financial services sector in Britain is generated in London. The sector contributed almost a tenth of Britain’s total output in 2020, according to government figures in December.
Britain’s economy grew strongly in November to surpass its size in February 2020, just before the country’s first COVID-19 lockdown, official data showed on Friday.
As the cost of the pandemic becomes clearer and Britain faces rising taxes and inflation, “we could start to see a movement back into jobs out of the UK,” Enver said.
But for now, the London financial recruitment market remains strong.
London’s biggest publicly-listed recruiter, Hays Plc, said on Thursday employers needed to offer more flexible working and more competitive wages amid a war for talent.
While the UK’s overall labor market remained tight in 2021, with many employers struggling to find staff, London saw 34% more people looking for new jobs in financial services compared to 2019, according to Morgan McKinley. (Reporting by Joice Alves; editing by Saikat Chatterjee and Mark Potter).