The layoffs and pay rises in Lloyds' Scottish operations

If you were expecting a rapid turnaround in fortunes for employment opportunities in Lloyds Banking Group's Scottish operations this year, you're likely to be sadly disappointed - the bank is bearish on the country's growth prospects for 2011.

However, as the Lloyds TSB Scotland's 2010 financial statements (recently filed at Companies House) show, the bank has been comparatively reluctant to pull the trigger north of the border.

The group employed 1,863 people in Scotland at the end of last year, compared to 2,062 at in 2009. When you consider how many people the bank has laid off - 27,000 since the taking over HBOS - this is relatively small beer.

Despite this, the bank saved 9.2m on salary costs compared to 2009. This suggests that those who departed the bank in Scotland last year were paid an average of 46.2k.

What's more, while Lloyds has increased salaries for its Scottish employees, the average rise was just 2%. This compares with a rise of 3.2% in 2009.

Lloyds said that the money it puts aside for bad loan impairments declined by 46.3% to 56m last year, which helped drive a 118% increase in pre-tax profits to 161.8m.

This could be an anomaly, however. Lloyds expects challenging economic conditions in Scotland for 2011, and said this could mean "limited growth in lending and income while recovery in impairment in 2010 may not be maintained".

Certainly, there are few signs of any new-found appetite to hire on the back of much-improved results.

Recruiters we spoke to suggest that new change management projects are getting underway, but most of the hiring is still on a contract basis. Permanent roles are still something of a non-starter, they suggest.