UK governments plan to create more internships - The UK government is planning on giving unemployed graduates three month paid internships as a way of increasing skills, work experience and reducing unemployment.

Banks keen to employ graduates - Banks are keen to continue to employ the best young graduates whilst continuing to cut the jobs of more experienced staff. Graduates are proving attractive to banks as a cheap source of labour that will be available and ready for when the markets recover.

Help for long term jobless - The UK government announces plans to tackle long-term jobless, i.e. those unemployed for over six months. Unlikely to be a significant change in policy as tackling long-term unemployment has been a stated goal of the government since 1997.

Obama jobs stimulus plan - It is estimated that Obama's fiscal stimulus could create four million new jobs. It is hard to see how this figure has been calculated and will almost certainly be way off.



US unemployment increases to 7.2%, half million jobs lost in December - US unemployment surged to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent as a deepening recession pushed employers to shed a massive 524,000 jobs in December, capping a yearly loss of 2.6 million, data showed Friday.

Graduates looking for work as an investment banker or other highly paid jobs in financial firms will find it increasingly difficult to find the jobs they want if they are not attending some of the most high profile universities in the UK and the rest of the world.

According to an article in the Financial Times banking and financial institutions are slimming down their recruitment process, focusing upon a select number of universities.

In the past these firms would attend recruitment fairs and hold special recruitment sessions in at least the top twenty (Russell Group) universities in the UK. They would also target graduates in other universities with highly recognised finance and economic departments.

However, with fewer jobs to offer, smaller recruitment budgets and less competition for the best candidates, financial firms have dramatically cut back on their recruitment activities in those universities that they do not consider to be the best in the country. As a result those candidates in even some of the best universities in the UK have a significantly reduced chance of gaining employment in the sector.

The Financial Times identified the following universities as the places to be if you wish to gain employment in the financial sector:

Places to be:

● Inner circle (where most banks are searching for recruits)

Oxford

Cambridge

Imperial College London

● Outer circle (where some banks are recruiting)

London School of Economics

University College London

Warwick University

This is not to say that you can't get a job as an investment banker if you are graduating from somewhere else, however you are unlikely to be directly targeted by the bank and are starting one step behind.

FT article: Banking graduate recruitment