Today we have another sign that things are better than they have been. The PricewaterhouseCoopers CBI quarterly survey, which has not been cheerful in recent quarters, shows a significant increase in hiring.

The survey asks whether financial services firms in particular categories have increased or decreased employment in the past three months, and whether they plan to do the same in the next three. It then gives a figure equivalent to the balance of responses.

As the graphs below show, a balance of securities trading operations have increased employment in the three months to June, and plan to continue doing so in the three months to September. This follows several quarters when the balance was negative.

Securities traders: trends in employment over the past three months (excluding seasonal variations):

Securities traders: expected trends in employment over the next three months (excluding seasonal variations):

The exception appears to be the fund management sector, which remained optimistic about headcount long after securities traders lapsed into pessimism, and is now gloomy by comparison.

Fund managers: expected trends in employment over the next three months (excluding seasonal variations)