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How many bank jobs still face the axe? It's one of the more prominent and recurring questions following from the problems in Britain's banks.

That's particularly so at Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, which have promised shareholders (that's mainly the UK government) that they will get back into the black with the help of colossal cuts in their cost base.

Lloyds has promised it will lop more than £1.5bn off costs by the end of 2011.

RBS is promising £2.5bn within its five-year turnaround plan.

It's just announced that it's so far identified £600m of that, so it's nearly quarter of the way to that target, and wants to get most of this out the way by the end of next year.

Translated into jobs - with RBS saying half its cost base is in salaries - that sounds painful.

Turning bad

So far, Lloyds has announced more than 6,000 are going, though trade unions see it as more than 8,000.

But with its half-year results, it also said it had identified £100m of its cost-cutting target , and it is on track to achieve £700m for the year's total by the end of the year.

RBS has so far announced roughly 15,000 jobs are going worldwide, more than 8,000 of them in Britain. A quarter of those have gone through compulsory redundancy.

However, we're being discouraged from thinking there is a direct correlation between cost-cutting targets and jobs shed.

I'm told Lloyds is achieving much of its £700m target by cancelling investments in product development.

For instance, quite apart from its well-publicised problems with legacy debt from Bank of Scotland Corporate and from its growing problems with mainstream personal, mortgage and business lending turning bad because of the recession, it has also been hit by the regulatory crackdown on payment protection plans.

Being binned

So its intention to extend its product range on that front is being binned.

There are bond and investment products, and a suite of pension options, that aren't going anywhere.

Of course, the cost of developing these can be measured in people and staff posts as well - in IT for instance, with the banks previously big investors in research and development for financial services innovation.

One of the changes that banks had in mind even before the crisis hit last year was a significant shift to a much higher proportion of banking being done online, which offered them, and still offers them, scope for rapidly slimming down branches and call centres.

Neither of the big banks has yet got stuck into branch networks.

With those being the customer-facing end of banking, it can expect squealing from affected communities.

'Painful decisions'

And it's Lloyds that has the most potential for savings there, as there are so many adjacent Lloyds TSB and HBOS branches.

Asked about continuing job losses with his half-year results, RBS's Stephen Hester told me on Friday: "There is no business anywhere in the world exempt from having to cut costs. We do have painful and difficult human decisions ahead of us."

He pledged staff would be first to know, with compulsory redundancies kept to a minimum.

"We will try and get into this year and next the overwhelming majority of all the changes we have to make so that the bank can move forward with confidence on the strategic plan I've laid out," he said.

"So the worst is still in process in job terms, but we're trying to move as quickly as possible."

He went on: "Although Scotland will not be exempt - nor should it be - Scotland will see less job losses in RBS than other parts of our business around the world."

It's not just troubled banks looking at staff numbers.

The half-yearly figures from Edinburgh-based Standard Life this week also flagged up 200 posts shed, a continuing chill on recruitment and parts of IT being outsourced.