A quick and easy way to know whether you will lose your job in Bank of America’s upcoming 2,000 layoffs

Now that word is out thanks to the Wall Street Journal that Bank of America will be making another 2,000 layoffs soon in its investment banking, commercial banking and non-U.S. wealth-management units, the next question is who will be among those getting the boot?

Bank of America has been talking about laying off 30,000 employees for some time now, but the Journal report indicates the next 2,000 will be in addition to that earlier number.

So who’s at risk?

Bruce Thompson, CFO, gave a few pointers during the bank’s recent earnings conference call. He said that fundamentally, you don’t want to be doing anything pointless. The goal says Thompson is to get rid of work that doesn’t need to be done.

Equities professionals look a little precarious. So do Bank of America’s M&A bankers and equity capital markets professionals: revenues in ECM and M&A fell more than 33 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Junior M&A bankers seem especially exposed: the Wall Street Journal points out that Bank of America is trying to save money by pooling them in broad sector teams rather than restricting them to sector specializations, and then allocating them where they’re most needed.

Who’s not at risk?

Self-evidently, anyone doing anything significant and efficient. Also, we suspect anyone friendly with, or recently hired by, Tom Montag – who remains flavor of the month after sustaining sales and trading revenues with lower VaR in the first quarter. Also: anyone within rates, or currencies, commodities sales and trading, all of which had a good start to the year.