eFinancialCareers

There are further reasons to believe that investment banks are increasing their graduate intake again in 2010, but sadly this uplift is unlikely to bring numbers back to pre-crisis levels.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) has just released its winter review, revealing that investment banks and fund managers intend to take on 16.2% more students in 2010 than last year.

This is good news, and chimes with figures released in January by High Fliers Research. Still, AGR's 2009 review shows that i-banks chopped their intakes by 40.2% last year, so there's still a fair way to go (around 30%) before graduate recruitment reaches 2008 levels.

Source: AGR

Investment banking also remains the most highly-paid sector – graduates can earn an average of £38.2k and as much as £41.5k. Nonetheless, this has remained static year-on-year, while its nearest rival in the pay stakes, law, has increased salaries by 2.5%.

Source: AGR

It's still very much a man's world in the investment banking sector, with males accounting for an astounding 81.3% of graduate recruits.

Source: AGR

It's also worth mentioning that, in spite of a reduced appetite to recruit overseas candidates for UK roles, investment banks are the most likely to do so. They made up 25.6% of the 18.4% of respondents who said this was going to be part of their recruitment policy this year.