Trend sees sharp rise in numbers employed in financial sector
They are the number crunchersmeanttokeepthespending of firms in check in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
Now finance officers are seemingly more in demand than ever, with trends in the world of work in the past decade showing a sharp rise in the number of people working in the profession across the UK.
A study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has also revealed a spike in the number of waste disposal managers and police community support staff (CSOS) – a role introduced in England and Wales.
The jump has coincided with a fall in typists and telephonists, along with several traditional manual labour trades.
The research showed there were 266,000 business and financial project management professionals compared to 67,300 a decade ago, along with 41,800 finance officers (13,900).
There are also now 13,300 police CSOS employed in the UK compared with just 2,300 a decade ago. Happily for the ONS, there were also 58,900 actuaries, economists and statisticians – up from 27,400 a decade ago.
Other occupations showing
● Sales and retail assistants
1,077,200 workers
● Care workers and home carers 781,500
● Jobs described as other administrative occupations
774,100 ● Nurses 656,600
● Cleaners and domestics
580,200
● Kitchen and catering assistants 509,000
● Sales accounts and business development managers 473,100
● Primary and nursery education teaching professionals
442,100
● Elementary storage occupations, such as labourers and warehouse workers 441,100 ● Book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks
432,000 a marked increase in the past ten years include senior care work, science, engineering and production technicians, and vets. The biggest falls have been in moulders, core makers and die casters (down 77 per cent), telephonists (67 per cent), typists (65 per cent), printing machine assistants (61 per cent), and footwear and leather working trades (58 per cent), according to the study.
The number of plastics process operatives, steel erectors and forestry workers has also fallen, said the ONS.
TUC general secretary Frances O’grady will use her New Year message to urge the labour movement to pull together and not engage in “self-pity and recriminations” as it deals with the fallout from the general election.
She said: “As we face the challenges of the 2020s, all parts of the labour and trade union movement must pull together. We must be a broad church – and a bigger one too.
“Now is not the time for selfpity or recriminations. Our job is to fight for working people, not against each other.”
A separate study has meanwhile suggested managers have a broadly positive outlook on 2020 after emerging from a year of low productivity and Brexit-induced uncertainty.
Three out of five of 1,000 bosses surveyed by the Chartered Management Institute said the future appears to be brighter and expressed optimism about the prospects for their organisation.