Dive Brief:

• Top global investment banks raised pay for interns 37.2% between 2021 and 2022, and other large banks boosted intern salaries 36.9% Bloomberg news reported Friday, citing user-submitted data from Wall Street Oasis.
• Proprietary trading firms and hedge funds topped the list of average monthly pay for finance interns, but investment banks followed closely behind. The eight most remunerative financial firms all paid their interns more than $10,000 per month.
• According to the Wall Street Oasis data, Citi paid its interns $8,695 a month; Bank of America, $8,468; Goldman Sachs, $8,333; and Morgan Stanley, $8,005. Data from Glassdoor indicates Capital One paid its interns $8,333 per month.

Dive Insight:

As the war for talent rages on, top financial firms are hiking wages to attract entry-level talent. 

Wall Street banks are competing with technology and consulting firms for new blood, and trying hard to entice young workers away from businesses that may emphasize work-life balance and offer more pronounced hybrid or remote-work arrangements. 

In an industry where, just last year, junior analysts bemoaned 100-hour workweeks, and asked management to cap workweeks at 80 hours, many banks have no choice but to raise pay to retain workers.

According to user-submitted data from Glassdoor, in 2021, the number of internships paying more than $8,000 per month in the finance sector increased 33%, while that number increased 22% in tech, Bloomberg reported. 

And banks' strategy of throwing money at their entry-level pipelines seems to be paying off. 

This year, an all-time high of 236,000 people applied to Goldman Sachs' in-person internship program, up 17% from 2021, according to Business Insider. Morgan Stanley also saw an increase in internship applications between 2021 and 2022, Bloomberg reported.

Patrick Curtis, the founder of Wall Street Oasis, said he thinks the bump in internship applications may have to do with pay increases for junior bankers. 

The jump in junior banker pay from 2021 to 2022 was the highest he had seen since launching Wall Street Oasis in 2006, Curtis told Bloomberg. 

According to data gleaned from the site, proprietary trading firm Jane Street paid its finance interns $16,356 per month — tops among the firms included. 

The top eight investment banks each paid their interns an average of $8,000 or more per month. Internship programs at Wall Street banks typically last 10 to 12 weeks.

Pay can vary depending on an interns' location, as well as their role within the firm, with highly technical jobs like quantitative trading and engineering typically paying the most, Curtis told Bloomberg.