Inflation has arrived on Wall Street, and it’s bringing smiles to the faces of junior bankers — in the form of much fatter paychecks.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is raising the salary of first-year analysts to $100,000, up from $85,000, a person familiar with the matter told CNN Business.
The pay hike, which takes effect July 1, means some millennials and Gen Zers will be making six-figure salaries fresh out of college.
JPMorgan is also raising second-year analyst salaries to $105,000 from $90,000, and third-year salaries from $95,000 to $110,000, the source said, confirming a report from Insider. A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.
The hikes will make JPMorgan the most lucrative big bank for junior analysts — a shrewd move amid an ongoing war for talent between Wall Street and Silicon Valley, where many tech firms offer greater flexibility for remote work.
Alan Johnson, managing director at compensation consultant Johnson Associates, said the moves are a sign of “healthy business and a tight labor market.”
Banking culture came under further scrutiny recently after a group of junior analysts at Goldman Sachs (GS) detailed horror stories of 95-hour work weeks and sleeping just five hours a night. That prompted Goldman Sachs (GS) to promise to speed up the hiring of junior bankers and free employees from working Saturdays.
More broadly, many businesses are having trouble finding workers — especially lower-wage workers — as the pandemic winds down. The United States had a record 9.3 million job openings in April, according to government statistics.
To that end, Bank of America (BAC) announced last month it plans to raise the hourly minimum wage of its US employees to $25 by 2025.
At JPMorgan, beyond paying junior analysts more, the bank made another move this week that could attract younger customers. The bank announced a deal Tuesday to acquire OpenInvest, a startup that specializes in the sustainable-investing trend that is particularly popular among millennials.
