2015年经济学人 专业和商业服务 英国经济的救世主

Professional and business services

To the rescue

Britain's new champions are bean-counters and PowerPoint artists

IN HIS budget speech in 2011, George Osborne, the chancellor¹ of the exchequer², laid out a new vision for Britain's economy.

Finance would no longer race ahead of other sectors³; a “march of the makers” would see manufacturing resurge.

Three years later, the economy is rebalancing—but not as he thought it would.

As expected, Britain's financial-services industry remains⁴ sickly.

It employs 56,000 fewer people than before the crisis,

according to a report published on March 31st by the Confederation of British Industry, an umbrella group, and PwC, an accountancy firm.

Nor are financial services rebounding⁵ as the economy recovers.

Figures from the Financial Conduct Authority, a regulator, suggest that, excluding back-office jobs,

the number of bankers has fallen by more than 10% since the crisis, reaching the lowest figure for a decade in 2013.

Manufacturing is starting to return.

Yet on April 8th the Office for National Statistics said that factory output is still 8.2% lower than in 2008.

Industrial closures have continued since the end of the recession—Dunlop,

a tyremaker, says it will close its factory in Birmingham next month after 125 years of production in the city.

Though industries such as carmaking are reviving, that may be more thanks to falling wages than to increased productivity.

Instead, professional and business services are picking up the slack (see chart).

Firms in this industry—which includes accountants and consultants⁶ as well as outfits⁷ that run call centres and other stuff essential to businesses—now contribute 27% more to GDP than at the start of the recovery,

and have increased staff numbers by 13%. Management consultancies have done particularly well.

Their revenues have grown by 24% since the crisis, according to Alan Leaman of the MCA, an industry body.

That has encouraged accountancy and legal firms to get into the whiteboards-and-flipcharts business too.

Much of the new demand is from abroad, says David Sproul, the boss of Deloitte, an accountancy firm.

Business-services exports have risen 21% since the recovery began.

Britain's trade surplus in services has doubled to 5% of GDP—the second-largest in the world, after America's.

Architects now earn over 50% more from exports than they did in 2009. Around half of the world's legal exports are British.

Many new clients are in Asia and the Middle East, where Britain's professional services are valued even more highly than its financial ones.

This success is reshaping both the capital and the country.

So many accountants and consultants now throng⁸ the streets around Shoe Lane,

in central London, that some have taken to calling it “Deloitte town”.

Large business-services clusters mean the economies of London and Manchester are probably performing better than those of Edinburgh and Leeds,

which rely more on finance, says Richard Holt at Capital Economics, a consultancy.

And more British manufacturers are selling services with their products, according to Tim Baines at Aston University.

Boosters speak awkwardly of “manuservicing”, but they may have a point.

Rolls-Royce now earns more from tasks such as managing clients' procurement⁹ strategies and maintaining the aerospace¹⁰ engines it sells than it does from making them.

Cynics say box-tickers have benefited lavishly¹¹ from the weighty stacks of regulation that have been pumped out since the crisis.

But whereas earnings¹² from finance and manufacturing are volatile¹³, a bigger business-services industry should steady the economy.

Since 1985 the sector's share of output has grown almost every year, according to the Work Foundation, a think-tank.

It even created jobs during the recession. Bean-counting and data-mining are not glamorous¹⁴ occupations. But they do pay the bills.

1 chancellor   

n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长

参考例句：

• They submitted their reports to the Chancellor yesterday.他们昨天向财政大臣递交了报告。
• He was regarded as the most successful Chancellor of modern times.他被认为是现代最成功的财政大臣。

2 exchequer   

n.财政部；国库

参考例句：

• In Britain the Chancellor of the Exchequer deals with taxes and government spending.英国的财政大臣负责税务和政府的开支。
• This resulted in a considerable loss to the exchequer.这使国库遭受了重大损失。

3 sectors   

n.部门( sector的名词复数 )；领域；防御地区；扇形

参考例句：

• Berlin was divided into four sectors after the war. 战后柏林分成了4 个区。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Industry and agriculture are the two important sectors of the national economy. 工业和农业是国民经济的两个重要部门。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

5 rebounding   

蹦跳运动

参考例句：

• The strength of negative temperature concrete is tested with supersonic-rebounding method. 本文将超声回弹综合法用于负温混凝土强度检测。
• The fundamental of basketball includes shooting, passing and catching, rebounding, etc. 篮球运动中最基本的东西包括投篮，传接球，篮板球等。

6 consultants   

顾问( consultant的名词复数 )； 高级顾问医生，会诊医生

参考例句：

• a firm of management consultants 管理咨询公司
• There're many consultants in hospital. 医院里有很多会诊医生。

7 outfits   

n.全套装备( outfit的名词复数 )；一套服装；集体；组织v.装备，配置设备，供给服装( outfit的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He jobbed out the contract to a number of small outfits. 他把承包工程分包给许多小单位。 来自辞典例句
• Some cyclists carry repair outfits because they may have a puncture. 有些骑自行车的人带修理工具，因为他们车胎可能小孔。 来自辞典例句

8 throng   

n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集

参考例句：

• A patient throng was waiting in silence.一大群耐心的人在静静地等着。
• The crowds thronged into the mall.人群涌进大厅。

9 procurement   

n.采购；获得

参考例句：

• He is in charge of the procurement of materials.他负责物资的采购。
• More and more,human food procurement came to have a dominant effect on their evolution.人类获取食物愈来愈显著地影响到人类的进化。

10 aerospace   

adj.航空的，宇宙航行的

参考例句：

• The world's entire aerospace industry is feeling the chill winds of recession.全世界的航空航天工业都感受到了经济衰退的寒意。
• Edward Murphy was an aerospace engineer for the US Army.爱德华·墨菲是一名美军的航宇工程师。

11 lavishly   

adv.慷慨地，大方地

参考例句：

• His house was lavishly adorned.他的屋子装饰得很华丽。
• The book is lavishly illustrated in full colour.这本书里有大量全彩插图。

12 earnings   

n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得

参考例句：

• That old man lives on the earnings of his daughter.那个老人靠他女儿的收入维持生活。
• Last year there was a 20% decrease in his earnings.去年他的收入减少了20%。

13 volatile   

adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质

参考例句：

• With the markets being so volatile,investments are at great risk.由于市场那么变化不定，投资冒着很大的风险。
• His character was weak and volatile.他这个人意志薄弱，喜怒无常。

14 glamorous   

adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels.南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It is hard work and not a glamorous job as portrayed by the media.这是份苦差，并非像媒体描绘的那般令人向往。