THE long slide in the number of jobs in the financial service sector
as banks, building societies and others have sought to raise
productivity has ended. Employment in the sector rose in the second
quarter of 1994 for the first time in four years, according to the
latest CBI/Coopers & Lybrand survey on financial services, and the trend
is expected to continue in the current quarter.
However, the upturn is patchy, with building societies and general
insurers seeing a further fall, while securities traders, insurance
brokers and venture capital firms are seeing rises in numbers employed.
Sudhir Junankar of the CBI commented: ''The rise in employment for the
first time since September 1990 coupled with expectations of a further
business growth over the next three months are encouraging signs that
the recovery is perhaps becoming more durable.''
Stronger growth is expected in the next three months, though at not
quite the pace predicted in the previous two surveys. Business is now at
its best level since June 1990 but is still considered below normal.
Only life insurers and securities traders reported a fall.
General optimism rose for the seventh successive quarter, though
almost as many sectors reported a fall in confidence as an increase.
The improvement in profitability slowed after four quarters, but is
expected to pick up again in the third quarter.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article