The financial services job market has climbed out of its low and begun a renewed ascent, but employment opportunities in financial services remain well below 2001 peak levels, according to the latestTMP WorldwideJob Index.
The latest TMP Worldwide Job Index, released today, shows a marked improvement in financial services job opportunities over the last quarter, but not enough to lift the index out of the lows it fell to in the latter half of 2001.
TMP joint chief executive Wayman Chapman says although the registered increase is a positive sign, there is still a long way to go.
“This is not a dramatic bounce-back but it is still a pretty solid result, and the level of optimism is solid,” he says.
The quarterly index surveying the recruiting trends of 6007 national employers for the months of February to April shows 24.9 percent of financial services organisations expect to take on more staff in the next quarter while 10.4 per cent will downsize, resulting in an overall net positive effect of 14.5 per cent.
The figure represents a 2.8 per cent increase from last quarter’s survey but is still a long way off the 29.6 per cent net effect figure recorded over the same time last year.
The survey also exposes the best opportunities for jobs over the next three months will be with medium sized financial organisations with between 20 and 200 staff. These groups recorded a 23.2 per cent net effect, up by 5.6 per cent from the previous quarter.
Chapman says although there is an overall increase in the survey results from last quarter, there is still a wait and see attitude from the major institutions.
“Most job opportunities are from medium organisations, the large ones are still saying steady as she goes. They are not indicating downsizing, but are not hiring either, they are still sitting on their hands,” he says.
According to the TMP survey, the majority of financial services job opportunities will be found in Queensland and Western Australia, which reported a net effect of 29.7 per cent and 22.9 per cent respectively. The Queensland figure is down 6 per cent from last quarter’s results while the Western Australian result is an increase of 6.5 per cent.
Victoria stayed steady with a net effect of 13.3 per cent, up by 0.2 per cent, while New South Wales came in fourth strongest with a 2.9 per cent net effect, registering a healthy increase of 6.1 per cent since the last quarter.
Chapman says the increase in job prospects should continue in the next quarterly survey.
“If what the survey is predicting holds, we expect subsequent surveys will follow in a similar way. There is every expectation as we head towards the middle of the year that we will build on what we’ve seen here,” he says.
