Has Goldman Sachs made Salt Lake City the best place to work in the U.S.?
Ever since the early days of the United States, New York has been a beacon attracting ambitious recent graduates and young professionals looking to establish themselves and start a lucrative career on Wall Street. Now, though, mid-sized cities in the Rocky Mountains may be more desirable destinations for aspiring bankers and asset managers to get their start in the industry.
Since the financial crisis, many big banks have begun moving jobs to lower-cost destinations. For example, Deutsche Bank is adding headcount in Jacksonville, Fla., its second-biggest office in the U.S.
Many expect that financial services organisations are going to base even more roles outside of New York to cut costs. Across the whole country, there will be a reduction of 50k financial services jobs over the next 12 months, Johnson Associates predicted, with approximately 10k of those redundancies in New York.
Where to launch your career
Fewer professional opportunities combined with a sky-high cost of living, with pricey housing arguably the worst offender, the Big Apple has become a less desirable place to launch your career, according to a new study by personal-finance website WalletHub. In fact, based on 17 metrics, including the number of entry-level jobs, the median starting salary (adjusted for the cost of living) and housing affordability, New York finished 127th among the 150 largest markets in the U.S.
On the other hand, areas where Goldman Sachs has been adding headcount did quite well in the rankings. In fact, Salt Lake City finished first overall due to its wealth of professional opportunities, while Irving, Texas, finished 12th overall.
Denver finished second overall. It is home to offices of various financial services firms, including Baird, Charles Schwab, Edward Jones, Fidelity Investments, FirstBank, MassMutual, New York Life Insurance Co., OppenheimerFunds, Personal Capital, U.S. Bank and USAA. In addition, the University of Colorado's J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities is there.
Photo credit: Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock
