Why the banking industry hasn’t rebounded 8 years after the crisis

Global Business

The global financial crisis is eight years in the rearview mirror, but the banking industry has not yet fully rebounded. Layoffs and lower salaries are part of the new reality.

As chronicled in the movie “The Big Short,” banking was once among the most attractive industries for the brightest and most ambitious. But since the global financial crisis, that’s less so.

CCTV America’s Karina Huber reports from New York.

Why the banking industry hasn\\\'t rebounded 8 years after the crisis

The global financial crisis is eight years in the rearview mirror, but the banking industry has not yet fully rebounded. Layoffs and lower salaries are part of the new reality.

Bloomberg reported that half a million banking jobs have disappeared since the 2008 crisis. While most of the layoffs have already occurred, the downsizing is far from over. Deutsche Bank recently announced plans to lay off 26,000 workers by 2018. And more banks are expected to follow suit.

“Americans seem to want to use their mobile phones to communicate with their banks and obviously the Internet. Therefore, there’s been a large number of branches that have been closed. And then when we get further up the chain so to speak, transactions are now being handled by computers that were once handled individually,” said Rafferty Capital Bank Analyst Dick Bove.

What’s really booming right now is the so-called “shadow banking industry” that can include hedge funds, peer-to-peer lenders, and private equity groups. Unconstrained by regulation, people who work in that industry can make huge sums of money and that seems to have replaced the banks as a top choice to work for ambitious business school grads.