Industry Update: Finance - August 2009

The US financial-services industry sector is in structural decline as a whole, as is Wall Street. Many of the jobs currently being lost in these sectors seem unlikely to return in the future. "Good riddance," some might say, after so many hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in bailouts to these very sectors. However, if the relative structural employment decline in the US financial-services sector were to persist or even accelerate, where would all these unemployed financial-sector workers turn for jobs? And where are large numbers of similar highly paid and skilled services-sector jobs going to be created in the United States (and especially the United Kingdom) in the future? This continued decline will surely put thousands of more highly-skilled, highly compensated workers in the unemployment arena competing for the few available jobs in other sectors.

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