When we wrote a few weeks ago that long term unemployed bankers are now irreversibly excluded from the job market, something (or someone) was bound to disprove it. The high yield market is that thing.

Over the past month, high yield hiring has gone wild. There have been senior additions everywhere from Bank of America (which has also hired in distressed debt sales and trading), to UBS, Calyon, and (allegedly) HSBC.

Among those falling into senior high yield and distressed debt jobs are senior high yield bankers who’ve spent long months playing golf. Michael Guy, the new co-head of EMEA distressed sales and trading at BofA/Merrill Lynch, was let go by Credit Suisse in mid-2008. Youssef Khlat, the new global head of high yield capital markets at Calyon, left BNP in February. HSBC is rumoured to have hired Doug Clarisse, who’s also said to have left BNP Paribas more than six months ago.

The sudden appetite for out of work high yield bankers reflects the market’s resurgence.

In the five months to September, European high yield issuance hit €8bn ($11.7bn) according to figures quoted by Financial News.. On one hand, narrowing spreads are driving investor appetite for high yield bonds. On the other, restricted bank lending is encouraging companies to seek funding via the capital markets.

Unfortunately for any still-redundant high yield types, headhunters say the spate of hiring may now be over. “It’s a very narrow population and most of the hiring has now been done,” says Lee Thacker at search firm Silvermine Partners.

And while high yield is coming back, the same is far from the case for leveraged finance, where the population was decimated in 2008. Leveraged loans in Europe in the year to date stand at just $44bn according to Dealogic; this compares to $158bn last year, and $467bn in 2007.

Bruce Lock, managing director of search firm Kinsey Allen, says leveraged financiers who are out of the market haven’t missed much. “As there hasn’t been a market for deals, there have been no technical innovations,” he says.