Agencies
Britain’s exit from the European Union led to the loss of around 40,000 jobs in the City of London, a senior official said Wednesday, representing a far greater impact of Brexit on the city’s financial hub than earlier projections had suggested.
Michael Mainelli, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, said Dublin had gained the most, attracting 10,000 positions, while cities such as Milan, Paris and Amsterdam had also benefited from jobs migrating from London after Britain voted to quit the EU trading bloc in 2016.
“Brexit was a disaster,” said Mainelli, the ceremonial head of London’s City financial center, which stretches over a square mile, including the BoE, international banks, and insurers.
“We had 525,000 workers in 2016. My estimate is that we lost just short of 40,000,” he told Reuters.The tally by Mainelli, who spent years charting the fortunes of Britain’s financial center before becoming Lord Mayor and has contact with hundreds of City firms, is far higher than the 7,000 jobs that consultants at EY calculated had left London for the European Union by 2022.
But he said the City of London was growing, including in fields beyond finance, with new jobs that compensated for the fallout of Brexit. Worker numbers have swelled to 615,000 as insurers and data analysis sectors grow, he said.
Nonetheless, his estimate underscores the scale of the fallout, as Britain seeks to rebuild bridges to continental Europe.
“The City voted 70-30 to remain. We did not want it,” Mainelli said, adding that he had redoubled his efforts to “engage more” with Europe, making nine visits to countries in the region this year.His push to bolster relations with the continent comes amid a wider economic slowdown in Britain, which has been riven by disagreement over its departure from the European Union.
