Chaotic markets could hit buoyant City hiring
FURTHER losses on global stock markets could feed through to the jobs market by the end of the year, a professional recruitment firm has warned today.
London’s professional jobs market was in fine fettle in August with 10,365 new financial services roles on offer, according to figures from Morgan McKinley, a climb of 30 per cent on the same month last year.
In a sign of soaring worker confidence, there were 15,212 professionals seeking new roles, more than double the number in August 2014.
Professional workers received a 17 per cent pay rise on average for switching jobs last month.
Banks also began hiring more people for riskier projects, Morgan McKinley said, another sign of increased confidence.
But the strong labour market may not last for long if global stock markets continue the decline sparked three weeks ago by a stock market crash in China. Morgan McKinley said that while the global stock market sell-off did not have an immediate impact on the professional jobs market during August, normally the effects of any market turmoil are typically felt with a three to six month time lag.
“If the market continues to stay in the red for the next few months, then we would expect it to show in hiring later on in the year. For now, it’s only a single month event,” said Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley.
Compared with July, there were slightly fewer jobs available in August, but this is attributed to seasonal factors, such as people taking a break over the summer holiday.