As reported by Bloomberg News, interns at Wall Street firms are getting bigger paychecks this year, as the finance industry seeks to attract more young people disillusioned by layoffs in tech.
For finance jobs across the U.S., median intern pay jumped 19% at 16 top firms studied by Levels.fyi, which analyzes compensation data submitted by users. The pay is even more significant at hedge funds and prop-trading firms, where hourly pay surged 29% year-over-year to $111, or $4,400 before taxes for a 40-hour week.
At Citadel and Citadel Securities, Bloomberg notes, the median wage for interns jumped roughly 25% to $120 an hour this year. For a standard month with 40-hour weeks, that’s $19,200 before taxes. Unsurprisingly, those firms received more than 69,000 applications for their 2023 internship program, a more than 65% increase year-over-year, according to a spokesperson.
“As students have become more informed about career choices in general — and the unique opportunities our internships provide for learning, growth, and impact — they have determined that Citadel and Citadel Securities are the best places to start a career at the intersection of tech and finance,” Matt Mitro, the firm’s head of campus recruiting, said in statement.
Boosting pay is a way finance firms with return-to-office policies are luring talent in an era where working remotely has become a popular perk, said Zaheer Mohiuddin, CEO of Levels.fyi.
At Barclays, summer investment banking interns in the U.S. are offered an annualized rate of $110,000, while the pay at Citigroup is $50 an hour. Bank of America offers a median hourly rate for interns nationwide of $41 per hour while those willing to move to New York for the summer earn a premium at $46.
Ford Plans to Lay Off 1,000 Additional Employees
Ford Motor Company plans to lay off at least 1,000 salaried employees and contract workers in North America, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The planned layoffs are concentrated in the engineering ranks, where Ford is targeting costs across its business units, a company spokesman told the Journal.
The automaker has made several rounds of global layoffs overt he past year, the Journal notes, including a 3,000 person reduction in the U.S. last summer and a slightly larger layoff in Europe earlier this year.
Ford has approximately 28,000 salaried employees in North America and the latest planned reduction in force includes employees in its electric-vehicle and software side of the business, the Journal reported. The cuts will also affect workers in Ford’s gas-engine and commercial-vehicle divisions.
Ford is among the many automakers that have recently poured heavy resources into the development of electric vehicles (EV), which economists have noted is causing them to offset costs by making cuts in other areas of the business.
Ford has said it expects to lose $3 billion in operating profit on its EVs business this year. While executives at the company have said profits from its gas-engine operations would sustain the business in the midst of these losses, some analysts have questioned whether the automaker would require additional funding, the Journal notes.
DoorDash to Offer Drivers Hourly Pay
As reported by the New York Times, DoorDash said it would begin giving its delivery drivers the option to be paid an hourly minimum wage, instead of earning money for each delivery.
The move represents a significant shift for the app-based company that has been alongside app-based ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft in the ongoing legal battles to maintain the independent contractor business model.
Drivers for DoorDash who opt for this compensation method might now have an incentive to pick up smaller orders that don’t pay as well and that they would typically avoid. Drivers will be able to choose whether they earn money for each order — usually a few dollars in base pay plus compensation for miles drives — or receive a flat hourly amount, DoorDash said.
The hourly rate includes only active time, meaning time between accepting and dropping off an order, and does not include the period when drivers are waiting for the next order. Drivers will be able to toggle between the two payment methods. Tips would be applied on top of the hourly base pay, the company said.
DoorDash said it was adding the payment option in response to driver feedback, and because it wanted to give drivers more decision-making power.
“One of the things we’ve heard a lot is around choice: Choice of when, where and how they earn is really important,” said Cody Aughney, head of the company’s Dasher & Logistics team.
DoorDash said drivers who chose to be paid hourly and those earning money per delivery were likely to earn a similar amount. The minimum compensation will depend on the region and range from $10 to $19.50 per hour, the company said.
Niantic Is Laying Off 230 Employees
Niantic, the creator of “Pokemon Go,” is laying off about 25% of its workforce and plans to shut down some games, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Closely held Niantic told employees in a recent email that it is laying off about 230 people and will be sunsetting its “NBA All-World" game and will be stopping production of “Marvel: World of Heroes,” the Journal reported.
CEO John Hanke said in the email that the layoffs were “to weather the current challenges in the market and take advantage of the long-term opportunity in front of us.” He added that the company needed to cut back because its expenses were growing faster than its revenue.
“Pokemon Go” was one of the first videogames to use augmented reality , which created virality that helped the company gain notoriety in 2016. Niantic’s app makes money by charging for in-app purchases that help players excel at the game.
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