It is the revenge of the rude mechanicals. People who make things are in high demand. Those who meet, manage and delegate are supernumerary.

British Telecom sort of said it today when it announced plans to shed 5,000 people. The old telephone utility has been chucking out "dead wood" for years but it has finally decided to take a close look at the layers of people in suits who occupy layers of floors in offices.

These are expensive: both floor space and salaries are costly and the padding must go. Over at BP, Tony Hayward, the chief executive, is looking closely at who does what. Four layers of management are to be removed. Legions of agenda planners, strategists, communicators and bag carriers are being pushed into the front line, or out the door.

Companies tend to accumulate jobs in periods of affluence and Britain has had a decade to fatten up. Most at risk are those in the financial services sector, where "makers" are thin on the ground. A typical financial business is built around one manager and one boffin who dreams up the wizard scheme to cream off 20 basis points of extra margin.

The rest of the staff are mainly transaction processors and the City employs many thousands who earn large multiples of the national average wage. How many are needed to earn that margin, how many are hangers-on and what if the margin disappears?

Across the Channel, where manufacturing is still a relevant occupation, the financial whirlwind is taking its toll and EADS says that it will need to reduce costs by €1 billion. The falling dollar is crimping the competitive edge of Airbus — in dollar terms, the wage of a riveter in Toulouse must now be at a substantial premium to his Seattle counterpart.

However, with production ramping up, Louis Gallois, the EADS chief, cannot afford to dismiss riveters, electricians and aerospace technicians. The makers are wanted, so it is the meeters and planners and communicators who are likely to get the chop.

It does not mean that these companies will employ fewer people. There is an acute shortage of skills: just as London's building sites are short of brickies, manufacturers are desperate for people with tangible skills. Oil companies, such as BP and Shell are desperate for staff, of the right sort. We may soon look back in astonishment at a decade when people seemed to be able to write their job descriptions.

London has flourished on the back of an expansion of services, not all of which are required. As the world loses its liking for its greatest financial commodity, the dollar, it hungers for things more tangible: stuff that can burn, stuff with which you can build and stuff you can eat.

It is not great news for those with more fluffy products to sell. Britain has set out its stall selling intangibles from very expensive offices. Suddenly, those products do not look such great value.

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