Jobs in education are expected to rise while financial jobs will diminish, according to government research
Dramatically fewer college graduates want to work in financial services and many Wall Street veterans are turning away from the industry, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Only 20 percent of the Harvard class of 2009 wanted to work in finance, down from 40 percent in 2008, and 47 percent in 2007, according to a poll by the university’s newspaper The Crimson. The situation is much the same at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), WSJ said.
“Something I’ve never seen before in 30 years is that this economy has made people really soul-search,” says executive recruiter Jeanne Branthover, who heads global financial services for Boyden Global Executive Search. “They’re saying, ‘If I’m not going to make as much money as I did, I want to look for something that I really like this time.’ ”
Such industry changes are expected to change the direction of the economy, according to government data.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers expects finance and insurance jobs to decline to 4.1% of the work force in 2016 from 4.8% at the end of last year, a point at which many were already gone. “Business and financial services are predicted to decline substantially from their pre-recession levels,” the Council said in a July report.
Meanwhile, health and education services will grow to nearly 18% of the U.S. work force in seven years, from 16% in 2008, the Council predicted.
The WSJ article profiles several former finance professionals who walked away from the industry, including Gordon Jones, a 26-year veteran of Wall Street who now teaches high school math in Greenwich, Conn.
[Image by Farlig Bank via Flickr cc 3.0]
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