Soaring demand for bankers, insurers and accountants, but graduates left out in the cold
Finance firms across the UK are on a hiring spree, as the number of job vacancies in banking jumped by ten per cent last month.
The new analysis of job openings by a group of recruitment firms will provide welcome respite from reports of swingeing job cuts, as the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (Apsco) found demand for finance and accounting professionals was on the rise in April.
However, with the UK’s construction and manufacturing industries on the slide, the number of vacancies in the engineering sector was down 14 per cent on the same month last year.
A separate report from Adzuna, also out today, showed that the number of vacancies for graduates has plummeted by eight per cent over the last 12 months. Starting salaries for newly qualified professionals also fell to a 30-month low of £23,309 in April.
The average starting salary for graduates in the capital was still above the national average at £27,027. However, Cambridge and Oxford were the two best cities for new graduates to find work, with only eight and twelve jobseekers for every 100 vacancies. In the north east of England, by contrast, there were up to 320 people vying for every 100 jobs.