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Professional and business services
专业和商业服务
To the rescue
英国经济的救世主
Britain's new champions are bean-counters and PowerPoint artists
会计师和PPT艺术家们成为英国各行业中的新贵
Dress-down Friday
不用穿正装的日子
IN HIS budget speech in 2011, George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, laid out a new vision for Britain's economy. Finance would no longer race ahead of other sectors; a “march of the makers” would see manufacturing resurge. Three years later, the economy is rebalancing—but not as he thought it would.
英国财政大臣乔治·奥斯本（George Osborne） 在他2011年的财政预算中曾勾画出英国经济发展的新蓝图。金融行业将不再领跑其他经济领域； “制造商们的快速发展”将确保制造业的复兴。三年后的今天，英国的经济的确正发生着转变，但却并非如他所想。
As expected, Britain's financial-services industry remains 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 rebounding 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.
如预期的一样，金融股服务行业依旧萎靡不振。根据伞形组织英国工商业联合会（CBI）和普华永道（PwC）会计公司3月31日联合发布的报告，相比金融危机爆发前，英国金融服务业的从业人员减少了五万六千人。 经济复苏也没有带来金融服务业的回暖。来自监管机构—金融行为市场管理局（FCA）的数据显示：自金融危机以来， 不包括行政工作在内，2013年银行从业者人数已经减少了超过10%，达到了近十年来的最低水平。
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.
制造业确有恢复的迹象。然而，4月8日英国国家统计局（ONS）却宣布，工厂产量仍比2008年低了8点二个百分点。萧条末期的工厂倒闭潮仍在继续—轮胎制造商邓禄普（Dunlop）表示，下月他们将关闭拥有125年生产历史的伯明翰（Birmingham）工厂。尽管汽车制造等行业已有起色，但这似乎得归功于下降的薪资水平而不是提高的生产力。
Instead, professional and business services are picking up the slack (see chart). Firms in this industry—which includes accountants and consultants as well as outfits 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.
相反，专业和商业服务成了挺身而出收拾残局的人（如图所示）。包括会计、咨询公司，以及呼叫中心等提供其他必要商业服务的公司在内，该行业GDP已经比经济复苏初期增长了超过27%，从业者人数也上涨了十三个百分点。 管理咨询领域表现尤为突出。来自行业协会——英国管理咨询协会（MCA）的艾伦·利曼（Alan Leaman）称，自金融危机以来，其营业收入增长了24%。这鼓励了会计和法律事务所也做起了这一“纸上谈兵”的生意。
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.
德勤（Deloitte）会计师事务所的老板，大卫·斯普洛尔（David Sproul）说，新增的市场需求大都来自海外。自从经济复苏开始，商业服务出口已增加了21%。英国的服务业贸易顺差已经翻了一番达到了国内生产总值的5%, 成为仅次于美国的全球第二大服务贸易输出国。与2009年相比，建筑师们的对外贸易收入增长了超过50%。全球法务贸易输出中，约有一半来自英国。许多新增客户都来自亚洲和中东地区。比起英国的金融服务，这些国家和地区更认可其专业服务。
This success is reshaping both the capital and the country. So many accountants and consultants now throng 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.
该行业的成功也重塑了伦敦和整个英国。如今太多的会计师和咨询师们聚集在位于伦敦市中心的鞋巷（Shoe Lane），以至于有些人已经称那里为“德勤城”。来自咨询公司凯投宏观（Capital Economics）的理查德·霍尔特（Richard Holt）说：大型商业服务公司的聚集表明伦敦和曼彻斯特的经济状况很有可能比依赖于金融业的爱丁堡和利兹好。
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' procurement strategies and maintaining the aerospace engines it sells than it does from making them.
此外，据英国阿斯顿大学（Aston Univeristy)的蒂姆·贝恩斯（Tim Baines）说，如今有更多制造商与其产品一起销售服务。支持者们简单粗暴地称其为“造服”，然而他们确实有点儿道理。如今劳斯莱斯（Rolls-Royce）从管理客户采购策略和维护航天发动机等服务中赚到的钱已经超过了其生产产品所带来的收益。
Cynics say box-tickers have benefited lavishly from the weighty stacks of regulation that have been pumped out since the crisis. But whereas earnings from finance and manufacturing are volatile, 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 glamorous occupations. But they do pay the bills.
愤世嫉俗者们认为，抱残守缺的人们已经从自经济危机以来涌现出的繁文缛节式的规章制度中获得了极大的利益。但鉴于金融和制造业带来的利益不稳定，更大规模的商业服务行业应该能够使经济稳定发展。智库工作基金会（Work Foundation）称，自1985年以来，商业服务行业在总产值中所占份额几乎是每年都有所增长。甚至在基金萧条时期，该行业也创造了就业机会。会计和数据挖掘并不是什么富有魅力的职业。但是她们确实是能赚钱的差事。译者：邵灵玲 校对：王颖
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