April 04, 2009

What may be unexpected is that unemployment in financial services is well below the national average—just 6.8%. The popular perception, at least outside of New York, is that there are no jobs in finance; Wall Street is clogged with people looking for work. The loose job market in finance is often used to justify the government's meddling with finance pay and the hopelessly misguided decision to make hiring workers who require H1-B visas more difficult. The unemployment rate suggests that finance has fewer people looking for work than most industries.

The idea that there's no "market" or competition for labor is absurd -- something that could only really be argued by people not paying attention to the industry. We write about brokers and bankers getting poached every day. Almost every day there's story of another financial industry superstar stalking out on their own to start something new.Perhaps it's wishful thinking; people would like to imagine that there can's possibly be demand for banking talent, and thus pay should be next to nothing, but that's just not the case.