One of the City’s top recruiters today warned the financial-services sector remains “pretty moribund” despite a jobs boom elsewhere in the UK, and it is planning on the basis that the City market will never return to pre-credit crunch levels.
Robert Walters reported UK net fee income surged 21% to £17 million during the three months to June in a positive sign for the wider economy.
Growth was broadly-based across the regions and in “pretty much every sector”, with the exception of financial services.
“It has changed in the last four months — it’s got better,” said Walters, chief executive of the business that bears his name. “There’s more movement, more activity, more jobs, more candidates prepared to move.”
Financial services is tough because “movement has been virtually zero in the last five years”, he said. “We adjusted our business on the basis that it won’t recover.”
However, Walters said previous recessions in 1991 and 2001 showed recovery in the City often takes many years. “I believe it will recover but in a different way.”
Part of the reason for the lack of City job openings is “people in those institutions have been scared to move jobs,” he added. “We don’t need new jobs. We need people to move jobs.”
Walters said the recovery in the rest of the jobs market has been lagging the wider economy.
“Everyone thinks recruitment firms are frontrunners and indicators but we’re not. Confidence has to return first. It is very early stages in the recruitment recovery.”
Revenues also rose for the seventh consecutive quarter outside the UK. Analysts at Investec upgraded its profit forecast for Robert Walters for both this year and next.
