Banking Jobs - Is It All Doom and Gloom?

Purely Banking is a premier jobs board for the UK banking industry. With over 3,000 banking jobs in the UK being available, from retail banking jobs, banking IT jobs and investment banking jobs, the question we are asking here at Purelybanking.co.uk: is the outlook gloomy for careers in the UK banking industry?

The nightly news is full of dark portents for jobs in the banking industry. Bank of America, the biggest bank in the United States in terms of assets, is to cut its staffnumbers by up to 40,000, some reports suggest. They are pointing to global uncertainty in the financial sector and a problem loan portfolio of around $1 trillion. The bank is also trying to put their house in order to comply with the terms of the Volcker Rule.

This significant downsizing of banking jobs coincides with several banks around the world looking to similarly cut their workforce; the 150 year old Swiss institution UBS, along with HSBC and RBS are laying off around 60,000 staff between them.

Here at home, there was a month-on-month drop in recruitment for the financial sector in the City of London of 10%, for the period of June to July 2011. That’s 18% down on last year. The number of new professionals entering the banking jobs market is also massively down by 44% from June, 14% down from the same time last year. This is not just happening in London, similar patterns are emerging in financial institutions across the globe. The big banks are concentrating on only recruiting the very best and retaining and promoting from within.

Improvement Ahead

The banks are obviously concerned over the financial turmoil we have witnessed recently but shouldn’t be too eager to lighten staff numbers. Things will improve despite what the media would have us believe. The major players in the big financial houses and treasury ministers won’t allow the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. The sort of brinkmanship we saw in the US, between Obama and the Tea Party Republicans, was played out as high drama but in the end it was farcical; we don’t believe that they would bring down the world’s most influential economy just to score political points.

The Volcker Rule, intended as a measure to restrict own capital investment by banks and thus prevent a repeat of 2008, is so watered down it’s almost a publicity stunt to boost Obama’s waning popularity. Following considerable campaign donations by the likes of JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs; Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former chief economist Larry Summers, and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett were always unlikely to turn their backs on such influential campaign backers. In London, as long as George Osborne has the keys to 11 Downing Street, he will be a friend of the banks and despite political rhetoric, he will do all he can to avoid the full impact of recommended regulation.

The economy will recover; we have no doubts about that, as long as the major players don’t panic. Obviously the levels of recruitment into the financial sector will improve, along with the economy. The Banks, that have been shedding jobs, will then have the expense of recruitment and training whereas the cannier institutions will be, right now, picking up the best of the recently redundant and the best of those new to the banking jobs market.