Scottish Sector Profile 2005: Financial Services

Futureskills Scotland's series of Sector Skills Reports 2005.  Key findings across Scotland:

• the labour market profile varies considerably across sectors in Scotland
• attracting appropriately skilled staff is not the most cited challenge for employers in most sectors
• skill shortages are uncommon but account for more than one third of all vacancies in the financial services and construction sectors
• skill gaps are more common than skill shortages across all sectors
• where skill gaps exist, employers in most sectors highlight weaknesses in soft skills such as team working and problem solving

This series of short reports presents key results of the Employers Skill Survey 2004 for a range of different sectors.   Each report was produced in collaboration with the relevant sector skills council or sector skills body.

The main focus of each report is on how an individual sector's labour market profile compares against other sectors. 

Each report covers the structure of the industry (full/part-time working, occupations, wages, age structure), recruitment and vacancies, skill shortages, skill gaps and training and development. 

Attracting appropriately skilled staff is the most cited challenge facing employers in only a couple of sectors construction and engineering construction.  Employers in most sectors are more concerned with increased competition and business regulations.

Labour turnover is highest in tourism  - 44 per cent compared to 21 per cent in other sectors.

In most sectors, less than half of all vacancies are considered hard-to-fill while less than a quarter of all vacancies are attributable to skill shortages, although this varies across sectors.  More than two thirds of all vacancies in the passenger transport sector are considered hard-to-fill, though few were attributable to skill shortages.  In contrast, more than a third of all vacancies in the financial services sector are due to skill shortages.

Skill gap rates vary across sectors and are highest in tourism, the chemical, nuclear, oil and gas and petroleum polymers industries, and the creative and cultural sector (around 14 per cent).  The lifelong learning sector has the lowest skill gap rate 3 per cent.  For most sectors, the skills most often highlighted as lacking where skill gaps exist are soft skills such as team working, customer handling and problem solving.  For a few sectors, weaknesses in other technical and practical skills were also important.

Employees in the public sector were generally more likely to have received off-the-job training in the previous 12 months over half of all employees in the health sector and the social services sector had received off-the-job training.

Scottish Sector Profile 2005 – Financial Services

This short report presents key results of the Employers Skill Survey 2004 for the financial services sector.  The report was produced in collaboration with the Financial Services Skills Council.

The main focus of the report is on how the labour market profile of the financial services sector compares against other sectors. 

Key findings:
• employees in the financial services sector account for around 5% of all Scottish jobs
• around one in three employees are employed in sales and customer service occupations
• the average weekly full-time wage is higher than the Scottish average
• where hard-to-fill vacancies exist, four out of every five are due to skill shortages

For further information about Futureskills Scotland, please Contact Us.

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