Thinking of starting your own business? The outlook might be brighter than you think.

I have some sympathy for the protesters camped out at St Paul’s.  Billions of pounds have been poured into our defective banking system, yet bankers continue to enjoy high salaries and large bonuses. 

Small and medium-sized businesses will be the engine of Britain’s long-delayed economic recovery. With the public sector hammered by cuts, and the banking and finance sector in retreat, we need to give more support to UK’s small businesses.

The Financial Times regularly features a survey of job vacancies produced by the recruitment consultants Morgan McInley. Their latest figures show that new vacancies in the City in September were 3,843, some 8% lower than the August figure of 4,158 vacancies. If you look at the way Morgan McInley reach these figures you will see that they extrapolate them from the vacancies they hold, based on the proportion of the City recruitment market they believe they have. At CareerBalance we contend that the real job market in the City is much more positive. Recruitment consultants only handle around 25% of the available jobs in the UK. This means that the true level of vacancies in the City right now is around 20,000 jobs. The hidden or unadvertised job market is alive and kicking.