It’s not just in finance that workers are becoming more demanding—a similar scenario playing out nationwide. Businesses from McDonald’s Corp. to country clubs in Nashville, Tennessee, have raised wages and offered hiring bonuses to lure new workers. From March to May, the rate of U.S. workers voluntarily quitting their jobs rose to its highest level in at least two decades. In Washington, lawmakers are sparring over raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Of course, the insulated world of finance and some other professional services operate on a significantly higher plane in terms of pay. Last month dozens of the country’s top law firms raised first-year wages to $202,500, give or take a couple of thousand. They’re also offering multiple annual bonuses and extra time off as they fight to retain talent and their workers face burnout.
The new six-figure salaries for first-year analysts at Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and others are close to double the estimated national average wage. BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, joined the war for workers by announcing an 8% blanket raise for employees.
Miller, who co-heads True Search’s financial services practice, says young bankers today have far more options than prior cohorts of analysts. Banks and consulting firms have long been a hiring source for private equity and, more recently, venture capital, tech and fintech. These days, with many of those industries hiring at record pace, many young bankers no longer have to stick it out for two years. They can depart early—or skip the sojourn in finance altogether.
Some bank chiefs have promised to ease the pressure. After the presentation by junior analysts, Goldman Chief Executive Officer David Solomon vowed to better enforce the rule that they should get Saturdays off. But sentiments carved into banking culture over decades don’t change easily. Lit pointed out that Goldman’s no-work-on-Saturdays policy has been in place since 2013.
“There has to be a way to get it to stick,” he said. “What good is making half a million if you’re working 20 hours a day?”
Of course, hardly all tech firms are filled with the stereotypical hoodie-wearing, sneaker-clad youngsters tapping away on laptops while curled up on bean bags, taking the occasional sip of Kombucha before jaunting off for a nap in sleep pods. But the broad strokes—a more relaxed office culture, more expansive remote-work options and better work-life balance—hold true, recruiters say.
And in recent years, as equity markets have boomed, it’s clear that tech can be an even faster path to both financial security and unfathomable wealth.
Kim Freehill, a managing director at financial services search firm FSJ Partners, said in an interview that hiring in fintech is so intense that some of her financial services clients are struggling to find available candidates for equity research jobs focused on that sector.
Lazard Ltd. CEO Peter Orszag seems to grasp the reality facing Wall Street: “It’s always going to be the case that investment banking involves hard work,” he told Bloomberg on July 1. But, he added, “it needs to be interesting hard work.”
—With assistance from Mary Biekert.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.