How safe is your job?
New statistics show that there was a dramatic increase in the amount of redundancies in the finance and business services sector in the third quarter of this year. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this week show that there were 34,000 redundancies in the finance and business services sector during the three month period to the end of September 2008. This represented a 62 per cent increase on the total for the previous quarter when 21,000 redundancies were made. However, the number of redundancies made in the third quarter of 2008 was up by only nine per cent on the total for the same period in 2007.
As of June 2008, there were 6,633,000 jobs in the UK finance and business services sector – this figure refers to jobs rather than the number of people employed because, if a person has two jobs, both are counted by the ONS. This actually represents a slight increase on the number of jobs in the sector in March 2008 when the total stood at 6,630,000. However, due to the fact there are no statistics available for the number of finance/business services sector jobs in the third quarter, we don’t know what impact the latest set of redundancies has had on the total. But what we do know is that, as of June this year, there were 23,000 fewer jobs in the finance and business services sector than there were in September 2007.
The ONS figures make alarming reading in a number of respects. Firstly, there were more redundancies in the finance/business services sector during the third quarter of this year than there were in any of the other sectors for which figures are available. The 34,000 job losses in the finance/business services industry compared with 31,000 in construction, 30,000 in distribution/hotels/restaurants, and 26,000 in manufacturing. Another concern is that in the finance/business services sector – unlike some other sectors – the general trend is that redundancies are increasing. For example, the finance/business services sector made 34,000 redundancies in the third quarter of this year compared to 19,000 in the third quarter of 2006. This contrasts markedly with the manufacturing sector, where the 26,000 redundancies in the third quarter of this year compared to 40,000 redundancies in the third quarter of 2006.
However, the ONS data does provide some good news. People with financial/business services experience who are made redundant are more likely to find a new job than people with expertise in manufacturing, transport or construction. As of October 2008, there were 138,000 vacancies in the finance/business services sector – this compared to 44,000 vacancies in manufacturing, 36,000 in transport, and 15,000 in construction.
