- JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs had strong performance numbers for the end of 2024.
- JPMorgan’s profit rose 50%; Goldman’s profit rose 105%, led by higher investment-banking fees.
- Here’s what it could mean for Wall Street employment in 2025.
Big banks posted fresh fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, led by a growing appetite for corporate financing, institutional trading and dealmaking — trends that could drive hiring in 2025.
JPMorgan Chase kicked off Wall Street’s earnings season by reporting a 50% jump in earnings, led by a 49% increase in investment banking income over last year’s fourth quarter and double-digit growth in trading income. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs said profit for the three months ended Dec. 31 rose 105%, supported by demand for corporate deals and capital raising. AND Citigroup reported a 35% increase in investment banking income for the fourth quarter from a year ago.
The strong results follow several years of declining demand for Wall Street businesses, layoffs, lower bonuses and an overall muted job search environment.
Now, 2024’s strong performances, particularly in trading, mean annual bonuses could be up to 35% higher than a year ago. Banks have begun sharing bonus numbers with employees, as Business Insider reported last week.
More broadly, Wall Street executive trackers say hiring has picked up in select areas in recent months, including junior banking roles and office technology jobs. They expect the change to continue in 2025.
“Goldman’s 45% jump in earnings and CEO David Solomon’s bullish outlook on M&A signal a marked shift in the hiring market,” said Meridith Dennes, managing partner at recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners. “Banks that aggressively downsized during the 2022-2023 slowdown are now selectively rebuilding their deal teams.”
Of course, working on Wall Street may become more difficult in 2025. The industry’s notoriously long hours may intensify as the demand for deals and capital raises continues. At the same time, work-from-home options are shrinking, with JPMorgan last week telling employees on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week starting in March.
Here are 4 financial industry employment trends that could drive Wall Street job growth in 2025:
DEALERS
After several years of muted deals, demand for mergers and acquisitions has picked up in recent months, driven by lower borrowing costs as interest rates fall. The streak of M&A is expected to continue in 2025, helped by a more business-friendly regulatory regime under President-elect Donald Trump.
Growth is already affecting employment. As BI recently reported, John Weinberg, chairman and CEO of elite boutique investment bank Evercore, said in December that he was having an unusual time for year-end hiring.
“Most of the time, you don’t do a lot of recruiting in November or December,” he said at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York. “If you could see my schedule, you’d see that almost every day I’m talking and recruiting” new talent, he said.
As for the jobs outlook, he said, “You can probably predict that our recruiting efforts will increase, not decrease.”
Recruiters in December told BI that they’ve seen growing demand for M&A bankers in industries seen as hot for deals, including technology, healthcare, restructuring, industrials, consumer retail and financial institutions — a trend which they expect to continue this year.
Young bankers
The demand for young investment banking talent has also increased. Dennes, the headhunter, said she’s seeing particularly strong demand for what she called “seasoned associates,” but also at the vice president level, who tend to sit in the middle of the investment-banking pecking order.
As BI reported in October, JPMorgan Chase increased off-cycle hiring for junior investment bankers late last year, according to people familiar with the bank’s recruiting efforts and its online job board. At the time of the report, a JPMorgan executive told BI that the bank was hiring at all levels of investment banking amid a bump in deal flow.
However, whether JPMorgan’s hiring growth will continue into 2025 remains to be seen. On Wednesday, the bank’s chief financial officer, Jeremy Barnum, told investors that JPMorgan aims to keep headcount unchanged this year, after a 2% increase in staff in 2024. That includes a 3% increase in its unit of asset and wealth management. according to company files.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ career portal features 15 open job listings for junior bankers in New York, London and San Francisco, at analyst and associate levels, respectively. In January, one open role called for an associate to cover deals for financial institutions and asset management clients, while another sought an IB associate to focus on the entertainment sector. A third associate position was focused on executing general mergers and acquisitions.
Jobs in IT
Headhunters have said a range of financial services firms, from banks to hedge funds, are expected to boost tech hiring as they explore and build new AI capabilities.
In July, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he expects to do so add thousands of AI related jobs in the coming years. Hedge funds and proprietary trading firms have also gotten in on the act, pouring in big bucks, as much $350,000 annual salary, to thwart coveted AI researchers and engineers.
Meanwhile, some private equity firms have paid as much as $2 million, including base salary and bonus, for so-called AI operational leaders, recruiters told BI last year.
See BI’s top tips for landing a tech job on Wall Street in 2025.
Private loans and financing
So-called private lending has been on the move in recent years as more asset managers, such as Apollo and Blackstone, take on loans that banks consider increasingly risky for their balance sheets.
Plus, there are signs that demand for non-bank loans will only intensify in 2025, as demand for corporate capital increases, including for M&A.
On Monday, Goldman Sachs announced a new structure to capitalize on growing demand for funding. Its new Capital Solutions group aims to provide alternative sources of lending to corporate clients as well as financial sponsors.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that hedge fund Point72 hired Todd Hirsch, a former The Black Stone senior managing director, to build her new business with private loans.
Goldman on Wednesday reported record results in fixed income and equity financing, which includes raising capital on behalf of clients. Goldman’s CEO referred to the funding as a “major strategic opportunity” for the bank, thanks to what he described as “significant structural trends currently occurring in finance,” including the emergence of private credit.
See BI’s top do’s and don’ts for landing a job in the growing private lending industry.
