AI turns programmers, lawyers and analysts into ghosts of London’s past

According to a popular job site, if you search for ‘financial analyst’ you are likely to find around 80 job openings in London.

If this number may seem shockingly low for one of the world’s largest banking and corporate hubs, that’s because it is. Four years ago, the same website featured more than 350 of these roles.

This job has become one of the main victims of artificial intelligence. It’s a fate shared by other white-collar positions, where the suit-clad workers who once filled London’s offices, pubs and tube cars increasingly look like ghosts of the Square Mile’s past.

The UK capital, an international hub for professionals, is ground zero for the employment shift to AI, and data from the aforementioned jobs site Adzuna reveals which listings are suffering the steepest decline.

Job openings for City of London solicitors, software developers, management consultants and digital marketing managers, which are once in the hundreds, have all fallen to double digits.

Only a quarter of all jobs in London are now in white-collar jobs, down from almost half in 2022, Azna said.

Hedge funds that once hired three junior analysts to review company filings now only need one to oversee AI models. Consulting firms are cutting back on executive assistants as tasks like booking travel and managing partner diaries become easier to automate.

Banks are also downsizing junior analyst classes and relinquishing back-office roles as AI takes over functions such as customer service and transaction monitoring.

“Big changes are occurring across offices, hospitals, classrooms, film studios, public services, and everything that might define our cities, and they are happening rapidly,” Martha Lane Fox said at the King’s College London AI conference.

The entrepreneur, known for founding Last Minutes.com during the dot-com boom, was appointed by Mayor Sadiq Khan to lead the capital’s AI response.

Works being reshaped

Adam Banashek, a 39-year-old graphic designer, is one of many unemployed white-collar Londoners. The six-month search yielded no jobs, but it highlighted how AI and economic disruption are reshaping creative work.

“They’re looking for graphic designers who are also copywriters, videographers, and animators. They’re basically Renaissance people,” says Banashek, who now works as a freelancer.

“And they offer really interesting money,” he added, noting that London’s annual salary is around £35,000 (approximately S$60,260).

Shift is not just about job information. Banashek has already had his work rejected twice in favor of AI-powered designs.

According to research commissioned by the Greater London Authority, around half of London’s workers (equivalent to 2.4 million people) have jobs where some tasks can be automated using AI, a higher proportion than the UK average.

This technology can help many of these employees be more productive, especially those with multifaceted roles that require judgment, creativity, and relationship building.

In contrast, some bookkeepers, brokers, and administrative staff are considered at high risk of losing their jobs to AI tools.

There are over 300,000 workers in this category in London. Another 748,000 people fall into the next highest risk category. This includes economists, software developers, and accountants.

Let’s take hedge funds as an example.

“The demand for great portfolio managers has never been greater,” said Sean Sweeney, founder of CW Talent Solutions.

“But the layer of people underneath that is rapidly disappearing. Companies are no longer building teams around[portfolio managers]they just hand one person an AI tool and that’s it.”

Similar images elsewhere

There are similar photos in other places. Marketing can use AI tools to analyze campaigns, track website activity, and generate instant insights, reducing the need for teams of 6 to 10 junior analysts.

Shamus Ray, a private investor in the AI ​​business and former head of innovation at KPMG UK, speaking at the same King’s College London conference as Lanefox, said much of the “tedious” auditing work, such as reviewing financial records and checking transactions, could be automated, with final approval largely left to human judgement.

James Matthews, CEO of retail robotics company Ocado Technologies, said AI is helping software engineers complete tasks 10 times faster, such as restructuring existing code to make it easier to understand and update.

Bank executives are speaking more openly about using AI to reduce costs and increase revenue.

London-based Standard Chartered plans to cut around 8,000 roles through AI-driven efficiencies. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that HSBC is considering cutting about 20,000 jobs, with hopes that AI will help cut middle- and back-office jobs.

Businesses have invested heavily in AI in recent years, but the sweeping benefits many expected have yet to materialize. A recent study by Accenture found that executives are still primarily looking at technology as a means to reduce costs, rather than to significantly improve productivity.

“Companies are still trying to figure it out, but if you’re a public company and you see your competitors cutting 5% to 10% of jobs, you’re going to be like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do the same thing,'” said Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic of advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

He added that very few companies have three- to five-year plans for their employees.

These cuts often start at entry-level jobs, which risks creating problems down the road.

“If you’re not going to train and develop young talent over the next two to three years, how are you going to feed your middle management pipeline over the next few years?” said Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna. “I don’t know if anyone has a great answer for that.”

“I’m always thinking about what else to do,” said Banashek, a graphic designer who worked in Paris, Berlin, Munich and his hometown of Warsaw before moving to London a year and a half ago.

“Maybe I should apply at a coffee shop to work as a barista,” he said. “I’ve never done it before and it looks like a lot of fun.” “I also want to try painting on canvas with my own hands.”Bloomberg