Cull of City jobs 'likely to be even greater than feared'

The scale of the bloodbath in City jobs looks set to be greater than feared it emerged yesterday.

The number of people working in London's financial markets will fall to its lowest level since 2002 by next year and even greater job cuts could occur if trading levels do not start to pick up, a leading economist warned.

"We are forecasting a further 13,000 jobs will disappear between now and next year," Douglas McWilliams, the chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), said. "But most of that figure is made up of job cuts which have already been announced, like those at UBS last week. Our forecast is based on some improvement in trading volumes next year.

"If the level of activity does not recover there will be further job losses on top."

He said the axe had fallen largely on the big trading floors in the City where share trading is down 20 per cent by value over the last year and gilt trading is down by a third.

The CEBR has cut its forecast for 2013 City jobs in wholesale financial markets to 237,000 – the lowest since 2002.

Mr McWilliam said he believed that unlike in previous culls in the City, the vast bulk of recent and forthcoming cuts will be among front-office traders and not back-office support staff.