London workers more gloomy about prospects of finding a new job: Report

By Jill Namatsi and Jack Ryan
 

London workers are more uneasy about finding a new job than in any other region of England, according to a poll that indicates gloom about the outlook for the economy.
 

About 38% of people in London said they were “not confident” about their ability to find another job in three months if they lost the one they had, according to a survey by Deltapoll commissioned by Bloomberg. That was 11 points higher than those in the rest of South, 6 points above the Midlands and 5 points higher than those in the North. Only people in Scotland were more pessimistic.

It’s an indication that London, which has driven UK economic prosperity for decades, has lost momentum after the soaring cost of living and the trend toward working remotely left less of a need for people to commute into city centers.

It also may indicate growing concerns about the jobs market after the national unemployment rate rose unexpectedly to 4%. London and the West Midlands have the highest levels of joblessness in England, according to official data published this week.

London’s relative gloom may reflect the difference between living in the city and working there, Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies. Compared to people living elsewhere, Londoners are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to be in work.

“Lots of people who work in higher paid jobs in London commute from the wider South East and will probably feel that they’d have a decent chance of finding another job if their current one ended,” Wilson said. 

“Londoners work in those jobs too, but they also work in the visitor economy, hospitality and retail, which are all pretty exposed if there’s a wider slowdown,” he said. “They may feel like they would struggle to find other jobs in those industries if they lost their current job.”

While London still is generating jobs, remote working and a shift toward moving jobs to cheaper nations outside the UK may have left workers with a sharper sense of competition, according to Dan Harris, director of the recruitment company Robert Walters. 

“In the tech space, there has been off-shoring to Poland, both for the cost savings and because of the talent that is available there,” he said, adding that banks that traditionally focused in London are building a hub in Manchester. “In the current financial climate, those cost savings are going to look attractive to businesses.”

Overall, 48% of workers in the UK said they were confident about finding jobs under similar circumstances, compared with 32% who were not.

About 53% of men were confident about their prospects, 10 points higher than the reading for women. People aged 18-34 were the most confident, while people aged 35-54 were the least confident.

Deltapoll interviewed 1,617 British adults online from July 7-10. The data was weighted to be representative of the adult British population. The margin of error for the whole survey was plus or minus 2.4%, though in London, where the sample size was smaller, it was 7.4%.