Trust me the recession word is being bounded around the City. I have 6 years experience working in the City and the feedback that I am getting from people is that it is bad, very bad. You quote negative growth, the FTSE is in and out of a bear market, shares are continuing to fall. Less people are looking to list, means that lawyers etc get less fees. Major financial institutions are going under in the US. Then there are people like Richard Branson talking publicly about how it is the worst period that they have ever know for the aviation industry (do a google search for Reuters article) Recruitment consultants will call, I get literally 20 calls a day but it doesn't mean that they have a job for you. Going to meet them also doesn't mean that they have a job for you, it just is basically them saying yep we like your cv and we will try and match you with a job. They do that to hundreds of other people as well, and at the end of the day they only want to get their commission.