Today two obtrusive numbers come onto headlines of many financial publications: the Royal Bank of Scotland is going to layoff 7,000 its staff, and UPS will put that figure to 8,000. The horrible scene of job loss in financial market now begins to full-fledge. The big names in the industry will be hit the hardest first.
More than 40,000 job loss in City
Cut in RBS accounts for one fourth of the bank’s total 28,000 employees, as a formal consultation for position redundancies is already undergoing in the bank. In the beginning of the year, JP Morgan’s London arm expected that there would be as many as 40,000 job cuts for 2008 alone. Many market insiders were mocking at the JP Morgan’s estimate to be over-pessimistic, however, as more and more banks are revealing huge write-downs in their book, the job cut plans are also gaining momentum from bank to bank, people are beginning to paint more gloomy pictures.
Business schools reap the windfalls
Interestingly, many business schools are now busy with putting up commercials and ads in newspaper and websites, in order to attract those who are laid off from financial sector to business schools for MBA or EMBA study. FT revealed in its February business supplement that MBA application cycle actually counters the economic cycle, in other words, the worse of the economy looks like the more people are going to apply for seats in the business schools.
MBA VS Recession
The applicants are hoping that by spending generally two years in business schools, they can fend off the sluggish period of market and economy, and then enter the job market again when the economy pick up pace again. 2008 will be an excellent year to test if this assumption is true or false.
Posted by julianlei 