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Working on the Street: The changing finance industry workforce
- 20% of Wall Street could be replaced by automation
- Salaries for financial types getting squeezed
[alert type=yellow ]Every week at Tradestreaming, we’re tracking and analyzing the top trends impacting the finance industry. The following is a list of important things going on we think are worth paying attention to. For more in depth trendfollowing, subscribe to Tradestreaming’s newsletters .[/alert]
The structure of Wall Street’s current workforce sheds some light on the evolving role of finance in the economy. Top bankers predict that Wall Street has hit peak human – employees will be replaced by algorithms soon enough (some senior managers think 20% of current staff will be replaced by automation in just a few years).
It’s not just banking and trading losing jobs. Asset managers are feeling the roboadvisory pull and more brokers are, too. Etrade introduces its own robo product (though, explain to me how a 9 member investment team approximates automated software). In search of revenues, other old school wealth managers are being pushed further down market.
But, bucking all the trends, Deutsche Bank ditches its own plans to set up a digital banking service.
In a world where Goldman Sachs pitches itself as a technology company (“it has more engineers than Facebook), many top FIs see competition for top talent coming from Silicon Valley, not from their NYC-based neighbors. Jamie D has JPM relaxing its dress code to help make it cooler to work in finance. GS doesn’t seem to share the same concerns, though – it’s processing 250k student jobs applications, a 40% increase over 2012.
Of course, the vast majority of these jobs are destined for men, as women still struggle to break into hedge funds (and finance, in general). For young'uns, getting a CFA isn’t a panacea, either. Can you believe that 75% of job listings which require a CFA have salaries of $60-$100k associated with them?
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