Revisiting the notion of rampant financial services recruitment in the UK

If you've been reading the papers this morning, you may be feeling excited.

Specifically, you may have read that 11,000 people were hired into financial services jobs over the past three months and that 10,000 people should be hired into financial services over the next three!

This seems a) exciting and b) weird. It seems weird because only last week, Lloyds said it felt the time had come to dump 15,000 of its employees and as far as we can see, we are now in a period of light trimming rather than febrile growth.

However, the survey from the CBI and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (from which the 11,000 and 10,000 figures are drawn) suggests things aren't that bad.

Yes, hiring has slowed. Yes, the really active recruitment seems to be in insurance. And yes, a large proportion of those 10,000 new jobs will probably pay less than 30k and be based somewhere like Hull. But as the figures below (based on a weird 'weighting system' showing the difference between optimistic and non-optimistic respondents) show, investment managers and securities trading houses are still bullish about hiring.

Could it be that the next three months won't be totally bad for financial services recruitment after all?

Excluding seasonal variations, what are the trends in numbers employed over the next three months?

- 'Banking:' +8. In June 2010 it was +35

- Building Societies: + 19. In June 2010 it was -91

- Finance houses: 0. In June 2010 it was + 87

- Life insurance: + 42. In June 2010 it was -83

- General insurance: + 17. In June 2010 it was -8.

- Insurance brokers: + 33. In June 2010 it was -4.

- Securities trading: +29. In June 2010 it was + 71

- Investment management: + 27. In June it was + 86