A Bad Time to Be a Broker?
Just as the credit crunch hits and banking business drops off somewhat, the securities industry has surpassed its peak employment from back in the dot-com days. That's gotta be auspicious:U.S. securities firms added 10,000 staff in June, pushing employment levels in the industry to 848,300, higher than the previous peak of 840,900 inMarch 2001 . The monthly rise is the biggest sinceJune 2000 , when 12,600 staff were hired after the dotcom bubble burst.
Figures published last week by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a U.S. industry lobby group that represents the biggest participants in the sector, showed that American investment banks have hired 97, 300 staff sinceOctober 2003 , the end of the last downturn.
More here, and a boom-bust paper on the securities industry's employment trends here.
