Wall Street Slows on Reaching Out to Recent Grads

For decades, college graduates and young professionals have been able to look to Wall Street as their post-grad launching pad to financial success and power. But over the last two years, more than 20,000 jobs have been lost in the financial sector. Workers’ average bonus payouts have declined by more than one-third, and revenues in the financial sector have dropped more than $35 billion this year alone.

As a result of such huge losses, many firms on Wall Street have either withdrawn offers previously extended to prospective employees, or delayed their beginning employment date. In some cases, companies have even paid graduates to delay their start date. In years past, the financial industry was so lucrative that college graduates climbed over each other to attract the attention of potential bosses. Students graduating from the top business schools in the country could regularly expect a base salary beginning around $100,000 in addition to hefty bonus packages. However, with financial markets failing enormously as they have in recent months, only half of the students graduating this year with MBAs had received an offer by the time they graduated.

Now that jobs are scarce, some college graduates have had no choice but to turn to alternative job paths. Some, armed with a good idea or backed by private investors, have decided to launch their own companies. For those without entrepreneurial spirits, taking jobs outside their chosen career field are their only option. Still others have decided to turn their energies toward enacting social change or supporting needed community incentives by working for non-profit organizations or even performing volunteer work.

Although many graduates have been able to find success in other careers, many still remain jaded and skeptical about whether the old Wall Street will ever return to its glory days of high salaries and instant wealth. The financial crisis has made people around the world more cynical. But hopefully, whenever the economy begins to rebound and recover, college graduates will once again be pursued and wooed by Wall Street. And hopefully everyone will remember and carry with them the scars of the past few months as a reminder of past mistakes.