“These Are Record Numbers” – Wall Street Interns Now Earning $16,000 A Month As Talent War Heats Up
Goldman junior associates who are complaining about the ‘5-0’ in-office work schedule should keep this in mind: an army of well-heeled interns are ready and willing to take your spots.
As the rapid pandemic-era wage growth (well, real wages, that is) for blue-collar and public-facing workers (in service and other industries) sputters as average hourly wages fail to keep pace with inflation, white-collar workers who are being aggressively courted with lavish bonuses and wage hikes are seeing those benefits trickle down to even the lowest workers on the totem poll.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that even the lowly Wall Street investment banking interns are earning up to $16K per month as Wall Street’s epic battle for talent reaches a new level of intensity. To put that in perspective, for the upcoming summer intern season, the top investment banks have boosted compensation by nearly 40% over the prior year.
We suspect that all of this discontent over being required to report to the office has something to do with it. One Wall Street compensation expert told BBG that this is the biggest jump in comp year-to-year that he has ever seen.
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 high-frequency 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.
A breakdown of average intern comp from BBG shows that the highest compensation is going to interns at infamous HFT market makers Jane Street and Citadel, followed by Bridgewater.
Source: Bloomberg
Top compensation is going to software engineers, quantitative researchers and interns. For now, at least, it appears Wall Street is winning in the eternal battle with the tech industry for top talent. But so far at least, Glassdoor says Roblox is the No. 1 source of compensation for interns.
Source: Bloomberg
But perhaps the most incredible aspect of this surge in pay for finance interns? The trend may only just be getting started.
“I’ve never seen such an acceleration in pay for junior investment bankers in such a short period of time,” Curtis said. “But a dramatic rise in pay isn’t enough to stop the attrition and the brain drain to Silicon Valley.”
Imagine what that will do to Manhattan rents, which have been surging to record levels during each successive month since late last year.
Tyler Durden Thu, 04/14/2022 – 20:45
