Our job offers on eFinancialCareers are among the most comprehensive and representative of the market in the financial sector. We’ve analyzed some of the trends we’ve seen over the past couple of years to give you a picture of how the labor market has behaved since then – although the future is yours to guess.
The graphs below show the evolution of the number of jobs published worldwide by sector on eFinancialCareers since November 2020. The graphs are indexed, with November 2020 at 100. The main takeaway is that the employment sectors more active in financial services are no longer progressing. ; they stagnate.
Investment banking (M&A, capital markets) jobs may seem like a roller coaster ride, but they’re subdued compared to the wild swings in private equity jobs. Investment banking jobs grew erratically between November 2020 and July 2022, but – worryingly for young investment bankers – investment banking jobs have since fallen. This might have something to do with the fact that bank revenues themselves are down around 50% in 2022 compared to 2021.
Things could get better. Deutsche Bank, for example, told investors on its third-quarter earnings call that it expects a “best year” for the investment bank in 2023 – although it would be hard to do worse than that. 2022 – and Bank of America has already announced that it will not cut IB jobs, Bloomberg reported.
Hiring of private capital, on the other hand, seems to follow seasonal trends and fluctuate wildly, although its most recent fluctuations have resulted in fewer jobs than in recent years. At the moment, PE jobs appear to be plateauing at a low rate.
Jobs in the middle office are less erratic than in investment banking, but they aren’t growing either. Only compliance jobs are currently more plentiful than they were in November 2020. While at-risk jobs have declined, they haven’t been as lackluster as tech jobs. Maybe people who leave tech companies won’t end up getting jobs in finance?
Offshoring remains a problem in major financial centres. William Wright, managing director of New Financial, a UK-based think tank, noted in a research paper that “many companies…have outsourced much of their support operations to countries like Poland – not because of Brexit, but because it’s much cheaper than employing them in London, Edinburgh, Manchester.
You might think sales and trade jobs would be booming by now. After all, Fixed Income Currency and Commodity (FICC) traders in particular have performed well in 2022. In reality, trading jobs are also down from last year.
As the chart shows, FICC jobs followed a downward trajectory throughout the period, although they plateaued at a low level in the second half of this year. Equity job vacancies have also fallen since July. Hedge fund jobs were flatter but flat from a year ago.
Why aren’t we creating more jobs? The earnings success of the FICC sector as a whole masks a variety of conditions in its component parts. Credit traders, for example, are doing very poorly, with revenue down 36% year-on-year and on track for their worst year since 2012, Bloomberg said. Commodities, on the other hand, are doing well. The same goes for macro desks – Deutsche’s rates revenue doubled in the third quarter, for example.
Jobs in stock trading are also in decline. The equity sales and trading sector generally had a more stable year, despite a 10% increase in equity revenue at Barclays in the first nine months.
The charts above are based on global figures. There may be regional differences. In New York, for example, things are looking up. The New York State Comptroller’s Report on the Securities Industry — which covers the world’s largest financial employer, Wall Street — estimates that the state’s securities industry added 1,600 jobs in 2022 ( until September).
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