The chart above shows the sustained dip in hiring after the COVID-19 outbreak, which lasted three quarters from Q2 2020 before rebounding in Q1 2021. Demand then surged until the summer of 2022, when rising inflation and market instability triggered a fall in job moves from Q4 2022.
Since then we have seen five consecutive quarters of muted demand against prior years, culminating in a record low for EMEA sales in 2023, a 43% drop on 2022.
We suspect the decline was a reaction to dwindling mandates, as asset allocators held back in the face of rising inflation and market instability. Many asset owners moved allocations temporarily into liquidity products while they deliberated on medium-term reallocations, which was difficult for anyone outside a narrow group of liquid strategies such as money markets, short-dated bonds and ETFs.
Hiring across the whole EMEA region therefore fell to the lowest point we have recorded in two decades. The more encouraging news is that demand picked up in Q1 2024, as allocators began to commit and asset managers revived long-postponed hiring plans.
Postscript, 2026: the recovery took longer to establish than this early read suggested, but it did arrive. We set out the fuller picture in Help wanted: senior distribution hiring is back, and the structural case for it in Why Asset Management Sales Hiring is Set to Surge.
If you would like our read on Distribution hiring trends for a particular EMEA market or client segment, please contact us at hello@godliman.com.
After 11 subdued quarters, the conditions for senior distribution hiring across UK and EMEA Asset Management have shifted, and hiring demand is back.
After a record 20-year slump, here are six reasons we expected hiring of Asset Management salespeople to surge, from the looming allocation switch to teams cut too thin to cope.
