- As summer turns to fall, financial powerhouses like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are resuming job cuts after a pandemic pause.
- Some Wall Street firms had previously vowed to refrain from making job cuts during 2020.
- Now, some banks have been pushing ahead with cuts as they enter into the final stretch of 2020.
- Have a tip on finance industry cost-cutting or job reductions on Wall Street? Contact this reporter confidentially at rhodkin@businessinsider.com, via the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758, or direct message on Twitter @reedalexander.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
After previously vowing to hold off on layoffs during the pandemic, some of the biggest global banks have been reversing course and announcing job cuts.
When the pandemic first started to upend global markets and trigger furloughs and layoffs across industries earlier this year, millions of people suddenly found themselves out of work. But some bank executives reassured staff that they’d postpone their standard annual cuts and restructuring.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told Bloomberg TV in June that his firm had abstained from 2020 job cuts “because it hasn’t been appropriate.”
And in August remarks, Noel Quinn, HSBC’s CEO, said that “it would have been wrong to proceed with job losses at a time of significant stress for our people and communities” during the first few months of the pandemic, but that the bank had resumed cost-cutting as of the summer.
“Many countries have slowed the spread of the virus and are emerging from lockdown,” he said, “and we have adapted to new ways of working.”
“I therefore decided in June to lift the pause on redundancies,” he added.
HSBC is not alone in pivoting back to cost-cutting. In recent weeks other firms have decided to once again proceed with cost-saving plans: Giants like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Wells Fargo have all moved forward with cuts.
Meanwhile, the global economy has yet to regain much of the strength that it lost earlier this year. The International Monetary Fund has predicted a sharp contraction in global economic growth by nearly 5% for the year, and jobs numbers in the US illustrate the deep malaise that is underpinning recovery efforts.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday that the US economy had gained 661,000 jobs in the month of September. That’s nearly 200,000 jobs short of economists’ expectations. And while the unemployment rate continues to decline from April’s high of 14.7% — September saw it dip to 7.9% — it’s still elevated versus 3.5% in February.
Business Insider is closely monitoring financial firms that are cutting jobs. Below, we’ve rounded up the latest announcements from top firms, and will continually update this list.
Have a tip on finance industry cost-cutting or job reductions on Wall Street? Contact this reporter confidentially at rhodkin@businessinsider.com, via the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758, or direct message on Twitter @reedalexander.
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