20 months ago, 90% of students accepted job offers from Goldman Sachs. Now, it's 80%

Goldman Sachs seems a less popular employer than it used to be. In a presentation today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch financial conference, Lloyd Blankfein said 80% of students globally accept their job offers from Goldman Sachs.

In March 2012, Blankfein said that proportion was more like 90%.  The recent Vault survey of popular internship programmes showed that Goldman Sachs ranked outside the top 10.

We conclude that Goldman is becoming less popular among the youth of today. This may be why the firm instigated the new policy to restrict working hours and prevent young people at the bank from working Saturdays.  It will be a long time before Goldman's desperate for applicants though - Blankfein also said that 43,000 people applied for positions in the firm's analyst class this year.

Once Goldman has persuaded young people to join, it seems that they're more likely to stick around. Average tenure for Goldman vice presidents has increased from 7.6 years to 9.1 years since 2001. This may simply be because mid-ranking Goldman bankers have nowhere else to go, or that they're hanging around hoping to get promoted. 

The relevant slide from Blankfein is below.

Separately, Blankfein said Goldman now has 25% of its global staff working in low cost places like Salt Lake City and Bangalore. Before the financial crisis, only 10% of its people were in these low cost offices.