Forget Alan Budd, whose departure from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility this week seems to have been a slight anomaly born of political harrumphing and the fact that he’s in his 70s and it was only ever going to be a short term position anyway – economists appear to be leaving the public sector.

Hence, Jens Larsen, head of monetary analysis and macro financial analysis at the Bank of England is off to RBC Capital Markets as a senior economist, following in the footsteps of Peter Westerway, the senior Bank of England Economist who left for Nomura last year, or Colin Ellis, the senior Bank of England Economist who went to Daiwa in 2008 before joining the BVCA last month.

There are always lots of economists trying to get out of the public sector and into financial services, but right now economists already working in financial services say there are even more of them than usual.

“Movement’s always happened, but there’s undoubtedly been an increase in the flow recently,” says one senior banking economist who originated in the BofE. “Public sector economists always want to move into the private sector,” confirms another one. “But until recently the net flow was the other way.”

This is probably because, until recently, the UK government was eagerly trying to hire from the private sector, and holding drinks parties to try and lure back stray alumni.

Nowadays, however, the Treasury has got a hiring freeze on and the Bank of England only has vacancies for security guards and payments processing people. Departures are not entirely unsurprising.