As top firms shell out millions in the battle for Wall Street’s best and brightest, even interns are seeing their compensation soar.
Top global investment banks boosted intern pay by 37.2% for the current internship season from a year earlier, while other large banks are paying 36.9% more, according to finance career site Wall Street Oasis.
It’s been a particularly tough recruitment year for Wall Street. As many industries struggle to hire workers in a constricted labor market, the finance sector has simultaneously experienced high employee turnover and dissatisfaction among junior bankers who notoriously grind through 100-hour workweeks.
Traditional areas of banking are now finding themselves competing with hip tech companies that offer more casual and flexible workplaces and more lucrative finance shops like private equity firms. As the talent war hits a fever pitch, the banking industry is boosting interns’ pay to help bolster its entry-level pipeline.
Wall Street Oasis founder Patrick Curtis said the growth in compensation for prospective junior bankers over the past year is the highest he’s seen since launching the company in 2006. And it’s not just the banks: interns at proprietary trading firm Jane Street are making an average salary of $16,356 a month — the equivalent of nearly $200,000 a year. Jane Street didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“These are record numbers for intern pay, especially what we are seeing in 2022,” Curtis said.
Hedge Funds
Hedge funds, high-frequency and proprietary trading firms topped the list for intern compensation, followed by investment banks, with the top eight paying a median salary above $10,000 a month, according to Wall Street Oasis. A typical internship at finance firms lasts anywhere from 10 to 12 weeks over the summer, although some offer extended training programs.
For the 0.8% of applicants who successfully secure an internship at top hedge fund Citadel, the median monthly pay is $14,000 or greater depending on the role — usually either a software engineer, trader or quantitative researcher, according to a spokesperson for the firm. Point72 Asset Management confirmed that the $10,750 monthly compensation was accurate for its 10-month investment analyst training program for upcoming graduates. Credit Suisse claimed the figures provided were inaccurate due to the fact that there are several variables that determine an intern’s pay, but wouldn’t confirm what its pay range is. The rest of the firms on the list declined to comment or have yet to respond to Bloomberg’s requests.
Curtis at Wall Street Oasis explained that firms usually determine compensation by how technical the role is, with quantitative trading and engineering internships usually paying the most. According to careers site Glassdoor, software engineering and investment banking analyst internships have the highest median pay at the companies it surveys. Location may also influence intern compensation, with positions in cities with high costs of living like New York or San Francisco often paying higher wages.
Unsurprisingly, interns pursuing advanced degrees also get a small leg up when it comes to pay. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an intern studying finance in the first year of a master’s program earned an average of $31.47 per hour compared to $19.67 for undergraduate seniors and $21.34 for juniors during the 2019-20 academic year.
The crowdsourced data from both Glassdoor and Wall Street Oasis are based on user submissions from undergraduate and graduate students from 2021 to 2022. Wall Street Oasis primarily collects data on compensation in the finance sector, while Glassdoor collects data from major companies across several industries.