• JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs had blockbuster performance numbers for the end of 2024.
• JPMorgan's profit rose 50%; Goldman's profit jumped 105%, led by higher investment-banking fees.
• Here's what it could mean for hiring across Wall Street in 2025.

Big banks posted blowout fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, led by a growing appetite for corporate financing, institutional trading, and dealmaking —  trends that could boost hiring in 2025.

JPMorgan Chase kicked off Wall Street's earnings season by reporting a 50% increase in profits, led by a 49% increase in investment-banking revenue over last year's fourth quarter, and double-digit growth in trading revenue. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, said profit for the three months that ended on December 31 rose 105%, driven by demand for corporate dealmaking and capital raising. And Citigroup showed a 35% increase in investment-banking revenue for the fourth quarter from a year ago.

The robust results follow several years of sagging demand for Wall Street's bread-and-butter businesses, layoffs, lower bonuses, and an overall muted environment for job hopping.

Now, the strong 2024 performances, particularly in trading, mean that annual bonuses could be as much as 35% higher from a year ago. Banks have started to share the bonus numbers with employees, as Business Insider reported last week.

More broadly, Wall Street headhunters say that hiring has been picking up in select areas in recent months, including junior-banking roles and back-office tech jobs. They expect the shift to continue in 2025.

"The 45% surge in Goldman's profits and CEO David Solomon's bullish outlook on M&A signals a notable shift in the hiring market," said Meridith Dennes, managing partner at Prospect Rock Partners recruiting firm. "Banks that aggressively downsized during the 2022 to 2023 slowdown are now selectively rebuilding their deal teams."

Of course, working on Wall Street could also get harder in 2025. The industry's notoriously long hours could intensify as demand for dealmaking and capital raising continues. At the same time, work-from-home options are shrinking, with JPMorgan last week telling employees on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week starting in March.

Here are 4 trends in financial-industry hiring that could spur Wall Street job growth in 2025:

Dealmakers

Following several years of muted dealmaking, demand for mergers and acquisitions has been picking up in recent months, driven by lower borrowing costs as interest rates decline. The M&A streak is expected to continue in 2025, aided by a more business-friendly regulatory regime under President-elect Donald Trump.

The uptick is already having an effect on hiring. As BI recently reported, John Weinberg, the chairman and CEO of the elite boutique investment bank Evercore, said in December that he's been spending an unusual amount of time on year-end hiring.

"Most of the time, you don't really do much recruiting in November or December," he said at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York. "If you could see my schedule, you'd see that virtually every day I am speaking with and recruiting" new talent, he said.

As for the jobs outlook, he said: "You could probably anticipate that our recruiting efforts will increase, not decrease."

Recruiters in December told BI that they have seen surging demand for M&A bankers in industries viewed as hot for deals, including tech, healthcare, restructuring, industrials, consumer retail, and financial institutions — a trend they expect to continue this year.

Junior bankers

Demand for junior investment-banking talent has also been picking up. Dennes, the headhunter, said that she is seeing especially strong demand for what she referred to as "the seasoned associate," but also at the vice-president level, who tend to sit in the middle of the investment-banking pecking order.

As BI reported in October, JPMorgan Chase ramped up off-cycle hiring for junior investment bankers late last year, according to people familiar with the bank's recruitment efforts and to its online jobs board. At the time of the report, a JPMorgan executive told BI that the bank was hiring across all levels of investment banking amid a bump in deal flow.

Whether the JPMorgan hiring boost will continue in 2025, however, remains to be seen. On Wednesday, the bank's chief financial officer, Jeremy Barnum, told investors that JPMorgan intends to keep headcount flat this year, following a 2% rise in staffing in 2024. That included a 3% rise in its asset- and wealth-management unit, according to company filings.

Goldman Sachs' careers portal, meanwhile, displays 15 open job listings for junior bankers in New York, London, and San Francisco, namely at the analyst and associate levels. In January, one open role called for an associate to cover deals for financial institutions and asset-management clients, while another sought an IB associate to focus on the entertainment sector. A third associate position was focused on executing general mergers and acquisitions.

IT jobs

Headhunters have said that an array of financial-services firms, from banks to hedge funds, are expected to boost tech hiring as they explore and build new artificial intelligence capabilities.

In July, JPMorgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, said he expects to add thousands of AI-related jobs in the next few years. Hedge funds and proprietary-trading firms have also been getting into the act, shelling out big bucks, as much as $350,000 in annual salaries, to snag coveted AI researchers and engineers.

Some private-equity firms, meanwhile, have been paying up to $2 million, including base salary and bonus, for so-called AI operating executives, recruiters told BI last year.

See BI's top tips for landing a Wall Street tech job in 2025.

Private credit and financing

So-called private credit has been on a roll in recent years as more asset managers, like Apollo and Blackstone, pick up lending that banks increasingly deem too risky for their balance sheets.

Plus, there are signs that demand for nonbank loans will only intensify in 2025, as demand for corporate capital raising increases, including for M&A.

On Monday, Goldman Sachs announced a new structure to capitalize on growing demand for financing. Its new Capital Solutions Group is geared to provide alternative sources of lending to corporate clients as well as financial sponsors.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that hedge fund Point72 hired Todd Hirsch, a former Blackstone senior managing director, to build out its new private-credit business.

Goldman on Wednesday reported record results in fixed-income and equities financing, which includes capital raising on behalf of clients. Goldman's CEO referred to financing a "large strategic opportunity" for the bank, thanks to what he described as "important structural trends currently taking place in finance" including the emergence of private credit.

See BI's top do's and don'ts for landing a job in the burgeoning private-credit industry.

• Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire in a deal meant to halt 15 months of fighting.
• A US lawmaker confirmed on Wednesday that there is an agreement in place.
• Hamas and other militant groups kidnapped over 250 people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

After more than 15 months of fighting and tens of thousands dead, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire, a US lawmaker announced on Wednesday, citing the Biden administration.

The deal, a major breakthrough in the Middle East, is meant to halt the bloodshed and facilitate the release of some of the remaining hostages.

"I have just been informed by the administration that a deal has been agreed to," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer told lawmakers at the Capitol. "It is welcome news that there is an agreement that will free many of the hostages."

Other reports have also said a deal has been reached, citing Hamas, American officials, and sources inside the Israeli government.

On October 7, 2023, as part of a Hamas-led terror attack against Israel, Hamas and other militants kidnapped 251 people from Israel. Around 1,200 were killed across the country.

Hamas and its allies still hold 98 hostages, an Israeli government spokesperson said on Tuesday, though at least 34 of them are thought to have died in captivity.

The deal, which is yet to be formally announced, is set to include multiple phases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said, "Several items in the framework have yet to be finalized; we hope that the details will be finalized tonight."

The first stage of the agreement is expected to include 33 hostages — most of whom are alive — released on "humanitarian" grounds, the Israeli spokesperson told reporters at a briefing. This will consist of women, children, the elderly, and hostages who are sick.

When asked how many jailed Palestinians Israel is willing to release in exchange, the spokesperson said that the country "is prepared to pay a heavy price, in the hundreds."

The Israeli military confirmed that it is preparing for the return of the hostages.

To date, 117 hostages have been returned alive to Israel, including 105 freed as part of a prisoner exchange in November 2023.

The cease-fire deal intends to put a halt to the ongoing conflict, which has seen large areas of Gaza destroyed and has left the militant group battered. The Hamas-run health ministry says Israel's military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 people.

Negotiations for a cease-fire deal have been ongoing for many months, but news that Israel and Hamas were close to reaching an agreement emerged earlier this week, hinting that, at last, there could be movement.

The deal comes in the final days of the Biden administration, which had been closely involved in negotiations to get a framework approved.

President-elect Donald Trump said his victory in November directly contributed to the deal coming to fruition. "We have achieved so much without even being in the White House," he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

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• James Watt, the cofounder of the beer company BrewDog, has criticized the UK's work culture.
• Watt said the UK was "one of world's least work-oriented countries."
• Watt stepped down as BrewDog CEO in 2024.

James Watt, the cofounder of the beer company BrewDog, said the UK was "one of the world's least work-oriented countries" as he criticized the idea of "work-life balance."

Appearing in an Instagram video alongside his fiancée, Georgia Toffolo, Watt initially said he believed "the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the work that they do."

Watt said he and Toffolo instead believed in "work-life integration."

Watt received pushback over the post and later deleted it from Instagram, saying "the comments crossed the line from debate to personal abuse." However, he later reposted it with additional context.

In the new post, Watt made it clear that his content was "aimed at founders, entrepreneurs, and people who want to push their careers forward," adding that "most successful leaders I know don't separate work from life."

In a LinkedIn post, Watt then suggested the pushback may be linked to what he described as the UK's comparatively low work ethic.

"As a nation, we love to joke about the French being lazy, but the reality is that our output per hour is 13% lower than theirs," he wrote. "I've heard countless international leaders say that the UK's work ethic just doesn't stack up against other nations, especially the US."

He then went on to cite a 2023 study by the Policy Institute at King's College London that found the UK public ranked among the lowest internationally for the importance placed on work.

The study, which looked at 24 nations, including Italy, France, and Russia, found that British people were the least likely to say work was important in their lives and among the least likely to say that work should always come first.

"This isn't to say nobody in the UK works hard—I know that millions of you do and are relentlessly grafting every day," Watt added.

BrewDog was founded in 2007 in Scotland and soon found success as it shook up the craft beer scene with its bold, controversial marketing and its signature Punk IPA.

The company has since built a network of bars and breweries around the world. Its Columbus, Ohio site features a taproom, hotel, and brewery.

Watt stepped down as CEO of the company in 2024, after 17 years at the helm. His departure followed a number of controversies over the company's alleged treatment of staff.

In 2021, dozens of former employees wrote an open letter accusing the company and Watt of creating a "culture of fear" in which staff were treated "like objects."

Watt later apologized to the former employees, saying the company had "always tried to do the best by our team."

"But the tweet we saw last night proves that on many occasions we haven't got it right. We are committed to doing better, not just as a reaction to this, but always; and we are going to reach out to our entire team past and present to learn more. But most of all, right now, we are sorry," he added.

In January 2024, BrewDog also faced fallout after it emerged it would no longer hire new staff on the real living wage, instead paying the lower legal minimum wage.

• Viral imitations of Hermès' Birkin bag have boosted awareness of Walmart's e-commerce marketplace.
• The positive attention is a tailwind as Walmart aims to take on Amazon's online dominance.
• But dupes like the so-called Wirkin also pose a challenge for the retailer's brand relationships.

For all of the fanfare they received last month, the internet-famous dupes of the ultra-luxe Birkin handbags have been disappearing from Walmart's e-commerce marketplace.

Walmart itself has been fairly quiet about the trend.

"In some instances, products may no longer be available," a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider, declining to comment on the items specifically. The spokesperson added that the company encourages shoppers to explore its website for "exciting alternatives."

The frenzy around these imitation luxury accessories, available for a fraction of the price of the designer versions, highlights how such an increase in attention can be a somewhat mixed bag for online platforms like Walmart. An imitation bag going viral on TikTok can bring publicity to an online marketplace while also posing legal and reputational risks for brand owners.

"The Birkin dupes on Walmart's site have attracted such attention because of the juxtaposition of a very price-focused brand and a very aspirational product," GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders told BI. "It underlines how much its marketplace has evolved over recent years. Walmart has been actively expanding the offer to attract more consumers, especially younger and more affluent ones."

Walmart executives have touted the massive assortment of products available via third-party sellers in its online marketplace, which launched in 2009. Last quarter, CEO Doug McMillon said the SKU count is approaching 700 million items — a figure that dwarfs the 120,000 SKUs typically carried in a Walmart Supercenter.

McMillon has spoken at length about how important a huge selection of products is for Walmart to become the first place shoppers think of when they need anything from a dozen eggs sold by Walmart to a pair of sneakers from a third-party seller.

"When somebody thinks about buying anything and they want to go search or they want to go find a specific item, we want to be in that consideration set and that requires 1P and 3P," he said in a September 2023 earnings call, referring to first-party and third-party goods.

Amazon largely achieved this place in American consumers' minds by offering more than 600 million products on its site, of which 588 million are sold by third-party vendors, according to Capital One.

But what happens when sellers offer — and shoppers want — products that might infringe on another company's intellectual property rights?

Neither Walmart nor Hermès have said publicly whether an official complaint was filed, but McMillon has often said the company prizes its brand partnerships and wants to keep suppliers happy.

That position could lead the company to take a more cautious approach with potentially risky listings.

While many of the listings for the imitation Birkin bags are no longer available on Walmart's website, similar bags can be found on some of its e-commerce rivals.

As of Wednesday, a third-party seller on Amazon was offering a $100 "Wirkin welmes" leather handbag, using keywords that were popularized in reference to the delisted dupes on Walmart.com. Amazon didn't respond to BI's request for comment.

Balancing new customer awareness with protecting brands could help explain Walmart's relatively low-key handling of the Wirkin trend publicly. However, this likely won't be the last time the company will have to thread this needle.

Opening the marketplace to an ever-larger number of sellers means there will be no shortage of listings that will go on to be deleted. Those future listings will likely come and go with less attention as more people realize Walmart's offering goes well beyond its physical stores.

If anything, the kerfuffle over the Wirkin shows that Walmart's marketplace ambitions have reached a key milestone, attracting a level of viral attention in league with existing titans like Amazon and eBay.