A final and depressing factoid from the AGR summer survey: there may only be 162 front office graduate jobs going in investment banks in London this year

If you're into depressing and gloomy facts, we have another instalment of bad news for you. Once again, it is taken from the Association of Graduate Recruiters' (AGR's) dismal summer survey of graduate recruiters' hiring intentions for 2012. It escaped us in our earlier gloomy article on this subject.

To cut to it, the AGR thinks graduate hiring by investment banks and fund managers in the UK is going to fall 66% this year compared to 2007. Out of a total of 21,194 jobs on offer, it thinks a mere 2.3% will be on offer from banks and fund managers.

Source: AGR

The AGR is therefore saying that investment banks and fund management firms will be hiring a mere 487 graduates in the UK this year. That's not a lot when you consider that it also thinks accounting firms will be hiring 4,641.

Worse, however, is the likelihood that very few of these graduate jobs are in the 'sexy' areas of the front office (sales/trading/M&A). Typically, the ratio of support staff to front office staff is 2:1. If this is the case and the AGR are right, there are only 162 front office graduate jobs to go around at big banks in London in 2012.   That is not a lot at all.