Wall Street jobs are being cut and ‘aren’t coming back’

Wall Street job prospects are dim for college graduates

Much of the burden of Wall Street’s latest retrenchment has fallen on young financiers. The number of investment bank and brokerage firm employees between the ages 20 and 34 fell by 25 percent from the third quarter of 2008 to the same period of 2011, a loss of 110,000 jobs from layoffs, attrition and voluntary departures.…

Young financiers have experienced setbacks in the past. Bankers and traders who rushed wide-eyed to Wall Street in the halcyon days of the 1980s were waylaid by the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987, known as Black Monday. Then they got pummeled in 2000 by the dot-com collapse and the recession that followed.

But experts say that today’s doldrums, unlike previous downturns, are here to stay.

“A lot of the positions that are being cut right now aren’t coming back,” said Leslie K. Hild, a vice president with the recruiting firm Right Management. “It’s an emotional roller coaster for almost everyone.”…

At Harvard Business School, where a relatively high 39 percent of this year’s graduates went into finance, compared to 34 percent last year, there has been a “heck of a lot more anxiety” about next year’s hiring season, according to William A. Sahlman, a professor of business administration….

“People used to think of some of these organizations, like a Morgan Stanley  or a Goldman Sachs, as safe career bets,” Professor Sahlman said. “Those firms are not going away, but they’re going to hire half the people they hired before.”

Several large firms are not recruiting new entry-level analysts for their investment banking divisions this fall, having filled their entire incoming class with last summer’s interns. At the University of Pennsylvania, whose Wharton School is the closest thing that exists to a Wall Street farm team, Goldman Sachs canceled its informational session.

Should they be occupying universities?

Many of the protesting “99 Percent” who are occupying Wall Street complain of staggering student debt.

According to The College Board, average annual in-state tuition and fees at four-year public universities increased by 72% over the past decade. Four-year private college tuition is up by more than 34% over the same time period, during which inflation rose only around 25%.

If banks have played a role in escalating costs that are fueling the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, is higher education blameless?  Universities have clearly failed to focus on keeping college affordable.

… Instead, it’s all about build, expand, rinse and repeat. After all, U.S. News & World Report doesn’t reward affordability.

But maybe the protestors should be occupying K Street?

Companies that are successful lobbying the Washington DC apparatus are simply playing off big government. To kill the effect of lobbying, skewer the beast and make government smaller.

Or looking in the mirror?

“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed,” the ex-Godfather’s Pizza CEO declared.

ADDED:  Maybe they can start by actually voting.

… only 24% of 18- to 29-year-olds voted in the 2010 mid-term elections….

It wasn’t Wall Street that created easy-to-get student loans and gave young people and incentive to apply for them, the government did that. It wasn’t Wall Street that has made college tuition so absurdly high that four years of student loans ends up creating a crushing debt load, for the most part government did that too. It wasn’t Wall Street that created the monetary conditions that made the Housing bubble possible and used Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac to encourage banks to give out loans to people who shouldn’t have gotten them, government did that. It’s not Wall Street that is saddling their generation with a crushing National Debt and an entitlement system that is unsustainable in its current form, government is doing that.

UPDATE:  Related – Impact of staggering growth of student loans on our children’s future