Goldman Sachs has boosted pay for junior bankers after internal complaints over long hours and amid similar moves by rivals designed to preserve Wall Street’s allure.
The investment bank has been responding in recent months to mounting discontent within its lowest ranks.
It is raising its salaries for junior investment bankers, with first-year analysts to be paid at least $110,00, according to Bloomberg, which cited unnamed sources. Second-year analysts are in line for $125,000 and first-year associates will receive $150,000.
Goldman declined to comment.
A leaked presentation in the spring sounded the alarm over “unsurmountable” levels of work amid steep demands and tight deadlines, with a group of young analysts claiming they had been working an average of 98 hours a week. Goldman insisted it was taking their concerns “very seriously.”
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Goldman is one of the world’s best-known investment banks with a market value of some $130 billion and almost 40,000 staff worldwide. Its profits surged during the pandemic after a sharp rise in fees.
Grievances among its junior staff came to the fore this year, however. As the bank’s top brass including David Solomon, chief executive and chairman, pushed for its workers to return to their desks, some of its most recent recruits said punishing hours were having a detrimental effect on their mental and physical health. A group of 13 first-year staff reported getting to sleep at an average time of 3am in a widely shared presentation. “I didn’t come into this job expecting 9am to 5pm,” said one. “But I also wasn’t expecting 9ams to 5ams either.”
Solomon, 59, later emphasised that Goldman was “working hard” to make life better for its junior staff. “This is something that our leadership team and I take very seriously.”
By increasing pay, Goldman has followed in the footsteps of competitors including Barclays, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase amid a broader battle for young talent on Wall Street.
Executives are loath to lose junior staff to rivals, or other sectors such as law and the technology industry, after well-publicised complaints over the lifestyle of young workers in finance.
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There is also concern at some of America’s top financial institutions at a growing reluctance among some college graduates to launch their careers in the banking sector. Two-year analyst programmes, although they come with six-figure salaries, are notoriously tough.
A string of widely distributed complaints about starting out on Wall Street have fuelled apprehension inside boardrooms that banks are at risk of losing top young talent to Silicon Valley or private equity firms.
In February Ben Chon, a former JP Morgan analyst, resigned after three years. “The lifestyle just gets pretty unsustainable over a long period of time,” he said on YouTube.
