The number of new City jobs created jumped to its highest level in over seven months, at a time of the year when vacancies traditionally decline, according to Astbury Marsden, a leading financial services recruitment firm.

According to the company, 2,500 new jobs were created in November 2013, up 6% from 2,330 the month before.

This is despite November traditionally being a month when hiring tends to wind down ahead of bonuses being announced around Christmas and the first two months of the New Year.

The number of new jobs created was up 38% compared with November last year, when 1,790 new City jobs were created.

Astbury Marsden says that the jump in City job vacancies may be the first signs of a general increase in City activity feeding through to job creation.

In particular, banks have benefitted from an improvement in investors' risk appetite, with an increase of around 10% in the value of FTSE100 since the start of the year, and a 9% increase in the number of M&A deals targeting European countries.

Mark Cameron, Chief Operating Officer at Astbury Marsden, said: "There is normally a lull in hiring activity at this time of year, and this is the first time since 2010 that we have seen a reversal of that trend. This is the long-awaited positive indicator that the City has been hoping for.

"We have seen more hiring to support growing activity in equities and equities derivatives trading. In particular we are seeing banks put increased resources into the more specialist equity derivative products, and into their quantitative trading programmes."

(CD/JP)