The City of London financial district could lose nearly 21,000 jobs by 2003 as a result of the financial market downturn, according to a study.
The cuts would take City job numbers back to levels seen in 1997/98, before the 1999/2000 technology boom pushed up stock prices and investment banks' payrolls.
Major investment banks such as Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston have already cut thousands of jobs over the past year as mergers activity slumped after the dotcom bubble went flat.
A new round of cuts has begun in the past couple of weeks, with UBS Warburg axing 200 London jobs.
The forecasts by independent consultancy the Centre of Economics and Business Research has tried to estimate the scale of the downturn in the City's financial services industry.
"Our central forecasts have the total number (of jobs) falling back to between the 1997 and 1998 levels by 2003 at 313,000, a peak to trough fall of 20,900," said Mr Douglas McWilliams, who heads the consultancy.
The survey is set to be published today.
He said this was bigger than the 17,000 job cuts they had estimated a year ago.
The number of City jobs increased dramatically in 1999 to 323,800 and rose by a further three percent to 333,900 in 2000.