The Square Mile’s productivity numbers are genuinely remarkable and genuinely under-discussed

A Productivity Figure That Deserves Considerably More Attention

By Chelsea Bloom. The City of London Corporation’s most recent statistics briefing puts a number on something many in the Square Mile have long suspected but rarely seen stated quite this plainly: financial services generated one hundred and eighty one thousand pounds in output for every job in 2024, making it one of the single most productive industries anywhere in the UK economy, sitting alongside related professional services that together produced over three hundred and twenty three billion pounds in total economic output.

The City itself, that famously compact square mile of actual geography, accounts for one hundred and nine billion pounds of that output annually, alongside nearly one hundred and ten billion pounds in tax contribution and one hundred and eighty six billion pounds in exports, figures that place financial and professional services comfortably among the UK’s largest net export earners in any sector, a status that receives, in my experience, remarkably little attention outside trade press and the sector’s own promotional material.

Why This Number Rarely Reaches Public Conversation

Part of the disconnect is structural. Productivity per job is an inherently abstract statistic compared with more visible measures like total employment or headline company profits, and financial services’ genuinely impressive per-worker output figure does little to generate the kind of visceral public narrative that, say, a single blockbuster IPO or a controversial bonus round manages effortlessly.

A Personal Observation On The Communications Gap

Having covered City economics for a reasonable stretch of years now, I remain genuinely surprised how rarely the sector’s own leadership leads with this specific productivity framing in public facing communication, given how directly it counters the still common perception of financial services as extractive rather than genuinely, measurably value generating.

A Statistic Worth Repeating More Often

Whatever the sector’s broader reputational challenges, a genuinely world leading productivity figure like this deserves a more prominent place in how the City explains its own economic contribution, rather than remaining tucked inside a periodic statistics briefing most people outside the industry will never actually read.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/