How Finance Jobs Have Changed in 2020 - 2022

The pulse of the financial industry's job market can be felt by scanning the job postings across the market. Fazzaco is dedicated to helping financial institutions, especially forex brokers, find new talent and opportunities. We've gone through some historical data on the industry's recruitment trends from 2020 to 2022, and we are showing you how the employment landscape has shifted in the last two years, as well as offering some insights for the future.

New Job Postings by Brokers Have Been Stagnating

Brokers have been on a wild ride with their hiring numbers for the last two years, swinging up and down like a rollercoaster. The Covid-19 pandemic that started in 2020 sparked a surge in online trading, and brokers added new jobs at an erratic pace from 2020 to mid-2022. But the tide turned in the latter half of 2022, when brokers, especially the big names in the capital markets like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, slashed their workforce. According to Fazzaco, Morgan Stanley's CEO James Gorman announced in December 2022 that the investment bank was trimming its staff worldwide​ to deal with the challenges of tighter U.S. monetary policy and slower Wall Street activity. The slump in hiring is also driven by a sharp drop in investment banks' revenues in 2022, which fell by about 50% compared to the year before.

On the other hand, the private equity sector has seen a seasonal and erratic pattern of job demand, resulting in fewer postings than in previous years. It looks like the private equity job market is settling at a low point for now.

Jobs Away from the Frontline Are More Stable

Compared to the front-office jobs that deal directly with clients, the middle and back-office jobs in financial institutions seem to be more stable, but they also don't see much growth in new openings. The only exception is compliance, which has seen a big jump in demand. Risk jobs have been on the decline, but not as much as the more technical ones.

Another factor that dampens the hiring appetite is the offshoring of jobs from major financial hubs like London. According to a report by the UK think tank New Financial, many financial firms have moved most of their support functions to cheaper locations like Poland - not because of Brexit, but because it costs much less to hire them there than in London, Edinburgh or Manchester.

Performance of Trading Market Jobs, Including Forex Trading

Trading of fixed income currencies and commodies (FICC) was hot in 2022. Fazzaco also noted in an annual roundup article in early 2023 that many forex brokers were settling in the Middle East and North Africa, which might make it seem like there was a huge demand for trading jobs. But contrary to expectations, the number of trader-related positions dropped last year compared to 2021.

In fact, trading positions have been on a downward trend from 2020 to 2022, and only started to level off at a low point in the second half of 2022. Stock trading positions also took a hit since July. Hedge fund trading positions held steady, but didn't improve from last year. So why didn't the trading boom translate into more jobs? The answer is that the overall profit growth of the trading department hid the underlying situation. Bloomberg reported that credit traders' income plunged 36% year-on-year, the worst year since 2012, while commodities fared well. The same was true for the macro trading desk - for example, Deutsche Bank's interest income doubled in the third quarter of 2022.

Stock trading positions also shrank. The stock sales and trading department had a lackluster year, but Barclays managed to boost its stock trading revenue by 10% in the first nine months.