by: Chelsea BloomPosted on: August 27, 2026

AI Is Quietly Rewriting Who Gets Hired In London, And The Data Finally Proves It

Software firms are seeing productivity gains build, while customer service vacancies quietly disappear

The productivity story everyone predicted, arriving with real numbers attached

Software and IT consulting firms have seen their contribution to annual productivity growth increase tenfold compared with the pre-Covid decade, according to the Credit Protection Association’s business briefing, with administrative and business-service firms seeing similar gains wherever repetitive processes like scheduling and invoicing can be automated. This is the first data I have seen that actually moves AI adoption from anecdote into measurable economic performance.

The uncomfortable other half of the story

A separate Bank of England analysis found vacancies in occupations most exposed to AI fell 15 percent over the past three years, compared with 10 percent in medium-exposure roles and just 6 percent in low-exposure ones. Customer service and administrative vacancies specifically fell by more than 20 percent, a number that should concentrate minds well beyond the tech sector.

A reshuffle, not simply a boom

Productivity gains and vacancy declines are, in this data, clearly the same phenomenon viewed from two directions, which makes celebrating the growth figure alone feel incomplete without acknowledging exactly who is absorbing the adjustment.

Fazit

The productivity numbers are genuinely good news for the economy. They are not automatically good news for the person whose vacancy just disappeared. More of my reporting lives at my full archive.

London is the engine room of the British economy, a city where a two-bedroom flat costs more than a small country and somehow everybody acts like this is fine. It is home to the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange, and approximately forty-seven thousand coffee shops staffed by people with economics degrees wondering where it all went wrong.

The City of London, that ancient square mile of suits and spreadsheets, processes trillions of pounds daily and has done so since Romans decided the Thames was a decent place to charge tolls. Canary Wharf arrived later, shinier, and with better sushi, promptly declaring itself the future of finance while the City quietly got on with actually being the future of finance.

London hosts more international headquarters than any other European city, attracts more foreign investment than it has any right to, and charges businesses rents that would make a New York landlord blush. The startup scene in Shoreditch operates on oat milk, optimism, and venture capital, in that order.

For all its contradictions — the wealth beside the food banks, the global ambition beside the collapsed Tube infrastructure — London remains what it has always been. The place where British business comes to be taken seriously, and to pay through the nose for the privilege.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Billingsgate, Smithfield, Borough Market — three of the oldest trading markets in the world still operating within a mile of each other. The City of London built its entire commercial identity on the back of fish, meat, and bread sold at dawn before bankers were even awake.

Lloyds of London — the insurance market that will insure literally anything, has done so since 1686, and operates from a building that looks like it was designed by someone who lost a bet. They insured Bruce Springsteen’s voice. That is a business story.

The London Metal Exchange — where the global price of copper, aluminium, and tin is still set by traders shouting in a circle called the Ring. In 2024. Remarkable.

Street markets as economic indicators — Petticoat Lane, Portobello Road, Brick Lane. When the economy tightens, street markets boom. Londoners have always known how to trade their way out of trouble.

The Royal Exchange — founded by Thomas Gresham in 1565 as Britain’s first purpose-built trading centre. Now it sells luxury watches and champagne, which is either a fall from grace or the purest distillation of London commerce ever recorded.

London's Business House -- Insight and Inside the Buying and Selling