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New Jobs for Wall Street Jobless

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Copied this from Bloomberg. Just wonder what can I do if I am jobless :) Takeout restaurant is by no way to be a choice----too many cheap Chinese rest. around every corner of the city. :(:D

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Wall Street's Jobless Try Cupcakes, Cheap Haircuts, Maybe Omaha

By Caroline Salas and Pierre Paulden
data



Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Jessica Walter didn't go to Harvard University to study cupcakes, but they're what she does since losing her job as a vice president in credit strategy at Bear Stearns Cos. ``I want to teach kids to cook,'' said Walter, 27, who founded Cupcake Kids! in New York to provide birthday parties and cooking classes for children. ``The goal is to have this be my full-time job and make enough to live.''
Wall Street professionals are trying new careers, and fetching smaller salaries, amid the elimination of 76,670 investment jobs in the Americas following the global credit crunch that started a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bankers are ``buying businesses for themselves, moving west or to Europe, including Russia, or to Dubai,'' said Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search in New York. ``They're also moving totally outside what they do, buying a retail store or a ranch.''
About 33,300 finance jobs in New York City, or 7.1 percent of the 2007 peak, will be cut by June 2009, the Independent Budget Office, a non-partisan monitor of city finances, estimated in a May report.
Expansion Plan
``The job market is in the worst, most chaotic state I've ever seen it in fixed income,'' said Michael Maloney, who recruits finance professionals for Maloney Inc. in New York. ``I've been doing this for over 30 years and I've never seen anything like this.''
Half the people working in debt sales, trading or research in New York at the beginning of 2007 will have been fired by the end of this year or won't get a bonus, Maloney estimated.
Jeff Salmon said job jitters prompted him to swap investing in asset-backed securities at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. for keeping the books at a hair salon. He and his wife, Olga, opened a Great Clips franchise in Mercerville, New Jersey, that offers $12 haircuts for both men and women.
``The structured finance market is so bleak right now, it makes sense for us to focus our energies on this,'' said Salmon, 49. ``It's refreshing to not have to worry about whether I am going to have a job next week.'' The couple plans to open another Great Clips in October.
Pay Cuts
Traders and bankers who leave finance can expect to earn a fraction of what they used to make. Compensation for employees on Wall Street averaged $399,360 in 2007, compared with $62,390 for New York City jobs outside the securities industry, according to the state comptroller's office.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which has cut 1,500 jobs, paid its employees an average of $661,490 last year, company filings show.
Walter, who studied economics at Harvard, is among those welcoming the opportunity to try something radically different.
``The biggest thing that I enjoy is being the jack-of-all trades of having my own business,'' she said. ``It's a challenge.''
Bear Stearns, where Walter worked, was facing bankruptcy before being acquired in May by JPMorgan Chase & Co., which fired 55 percent of Bear's 14,000 employees. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has eliminated 6,390 employees and Citigroup Inc. has cut 14,100, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Turning to Teaching
``The most affected areas are structured finance, CDOs and mortgages,'' said Arturo Cifuentes, managing director of New York-based R.W. Pressprich & Co., which trades derivatives. ``Over one-third of jobs in this area are gone for the next five or ten years.''
Gary Witt left as a managing director in structured finance at Moody's Investors Service to teach finance and statistics at Temple University in Philadelphia.
``It's hard to say if things were going well would I have left,'' said Witt, 49. ``It didn't look like the industry would be any fun for the next few years.''
Moody's, the oldest credit-ratings company, eliminated 275 jobs, or 7.5 percent of its workforce, to cope with a plunge in bond sales that sliced revenue from credit ratings.
Bond salesmen and traders are trying everything from bartending to real-estate sales to make insurance and tuition payments for their families, Maloney said.
``I know a few guys that started gambling, playing poker to pay the bills,'' he said. ``Especially ex-traders.''
Joshua Perksy took to the streets after being laid off as an investment banker at Los Angeles-based Houlihan Lokey. He strolled New York's Park Avenue in June wearing a sandwich board reading ``Experienced MIT Grad For Hire.''
``It's been slow and frustrating,'' said Persky, 48. ``The only places to turn are hedge funds and boutique banks. I've never been unemployed this long.''
While his gambit generated some job leads, none has panned out so far, Persky said. He's considering a move to Omaha, Nebraska.
To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Salas in New York at csalas1@bloomberg.net; Pierre Paulden in New York at ppaulden@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 15, 2008 00:01 EDT
 
Finally people who worked in finance only because of good salaries but always had a dream to bake cookies or to make haircuts can do what they love. I think it's better for everyone. One of the big causes of current crisis is that we had a way too many cookie-makers and barbers on the Street doing deals.
 
It seems in the wake of this crisis, the system is re-optimizing itself. The barbers and cookie cutters and people who aren't there to compete are being shown the door, and those that have a desire to be there stay there.

About Goldman's average salary:

Wow.

That's the kind of money I'm talking about.

Enough money to buy all of the proper insurance for your family, and to ever forget about filling out a financial aid form for your kids' college educations. Enough money never to worry about buying cheap and unhealthy food, enough money to buy a zero-emissions car, enough money to build a family in solid financial health, and most importantly: enough money to be an upstanding role model for those that wish to inspire this country's future.

That said, I'm not sure what the heck it is that billionaires and multi-millionaires do with their cash in terms of themselves.

But as for a mountain of cash, I already know what I'd do with any excess.

A) Use it to buy a seat on the Math for America board
B) Invest it into zero-emissions transportation technology
C) Invest it into alternative energy
D) Invest it into geo-engineering projects.
 
If only they brought some cookies to the office things might have turned out different. (Haircuts at the office....I don't know about that one).
 
...if they already have a gym, laundry services, catered meals, it's only a matter of time before IBs expand further to include haircuts, and more...
 
And then all these nice people will come rushing back. It will be an interesting day when someone from the haircut department at an IB starts making rogue trades in the billions.
 
7% attrition seems painful. What will it be like when it hits 25%?

7% attrition seems painful. What will it be like when it hits 25%?

No one can really predict the future perfectly all the time. However, here is excerpt from an analyst's projection. This is the same analyst who seems to have gotten the bearish call right on the banking industry and downgraded Goldman this week.

The woman who called Wall Street's meltdown
Star bank analyst Meredith Whitney says the economy is about to sink into a deep recession.
By Jon Birger (Fortune)

"Whitney's current concern is that banks aren't slashing costs and cutting losses in their loan portfolios fast enough. On the cost side, she says, banks have yet to come to terms with the disappearance of the securitization market, which she believes will stay in hibernation for the next three years."

"Why does this matter? From 2001 through 2005, for every dollar of bank capital used to make mortgage loans, ten were supplied via investors in mortgage securities. All that secondary-market capital is now sidelined, but the staffing levels of bank lending departments don't yet reflect it. By Whitney's reckoning, banks have laid off about 7% of their employees; she thinks the cuts need to reach 25%. "These companies have got to resize their businesses," she says. "Right now their expenses do not match their revenues.""

Lesson: As they teach in Systems 101, always have a backup and a backup of a backup just in case. Or as they teach in Trading 101, always manage the downside risk and upside will take care of itself.

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From: New Jobs for Wall Street Jobless

"About 33,300 finance jobs in New York City, or 7.1 percent of the 2007 peak, will be cut by June 2009, the Independent Budget Office, a non-partisan monitor of city finances, estimated in a May report.
Expansion Plan..."
 
Only 7%? So once you get your foot in the door, it just means that of 100 people, don't be one of the 7 clowns that bites it. Keep your fire of ambition burning, and focus it with your wits and education, and you should be fine.
 
Is it really that bad out there?

after i read the articles. i wonder if it's really that bad out there, i am working in a major bank and am looking for another job. if it's really that bad in the finance field, i wouldn't never got another job...:wall
 
Only 7%? So once you get your foot in the door, it just means that of 100 people, don't be one of the 7 clowns that bites it. Keep your fire of ambition burning, and focus it with your wits and education, and you should be fine.

No, 7% is the fraction of people laid off from subprime. It is the people fired and not replaced, as opposed to the number of people fired or who quit and replaced, which is the number you are thinking of.
 
Trickle-down effects ...

I just got laid off this a.m. and I'm not even in FinSvcs ... but my clients are.

OUCH.

But, more time to spend on linear algebra homework ...
 
Anittah,

When Mr. Vikram Pandit shut down the hedge funds end of Feb, I just moved into my Lower East Side apt., the only thing bothered me at that time is my rent :) Well, since too many takeout restrants and barber shops, bakeries around, I figured out I had to concentrate in financial jobs.

After a short vacation to San Francisco by my own, interviews started coming in. In the chaos of cutoff, I landed this job. There always be opportunities there, you just need to try. And everything will be fine :)
 
No, 7% is the fraction of people laid off from subprime. It is the people fired and not replaced, as opposed to the number of people fired or who quit and replaced, which is the number you are thinking of.

Even so, those with the ambition and the merit to do good work and keep fighting will find their place, or so I believe.

Anittah, my condolences to you. I'm sure you'll have no trouble getting re-established provided you're willing to keep persevering.
 
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