There is often a lot of discussion on CC as to how much new grads make in various industries. Here is a just published article on intern pay in tech and finance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/how-much-are-wall-street-interns-paid-some-make-over-16-000-a-month
Incidentally these numbers reported in the article don’t include housing, signon bonus (yes – even for interns), and travel. Full time new grad pay tends to be some 50% more than the aggregate pay.
Intern pay is tied to first year full time base pay. Actual first year compensation should exceed that base pay amount when bonuses are calculated and distributed, usually at the end of first year, and while they can be up to 50% of base pay, there is a lot of variability both among and within the employers listed. Also worth noting is that there are extremely few interns/first years at the firms listed at the top of the list, and it isn’t until the list reaches the bulge bracket banks ( starting at CS/Citi) that substantial numbers are hired at these levels. Moreover, several of those BBs have increased salaries outside investment banking, in corp banking, S&T, TTS, etc, to match base pay in IB.
TL; DR- a few MIT math majors nab extraordinary salaries at hedge funds; most others start around $100k base plus bonus.
That’s fair.
It is so crazy - I heard Citadel is paying referral bonuses to interns (which I have never heard before) to refer other intern candidates at these pay levels.
Jane Street and Citadel hire so few interns that these outliers don’t even merit discussion, imo.
Paywalled. Does this specify undergrad vs. grad school internships?
This is undergrad. They actually don’t distinguish. Bloomberg offers a few articles per month free. I would post a pdf here if I could. I don’t know how
This year Jane Street have 180 interns altogether. About half in the US. Probably two thirds at that pay number.
The one thing I would say, the second the job market softens this pay is the first to get hit. Firms need bodies. They often prefer someone with 2-3 years experience unless they have a training program or way to onboard.
Most of these companies strongly prefer hiring from college and internally training the candidates. Tech is forgiving. The high paying parts of finance are not — regarding the desire to hire direct. Even at tech, if they are taking a lateral hire, they discount the number of years of external experience. Regarding pay softening, much of the pay after year one is a function of performance.
You think 90 US interns is significant?
“Most” is a hard term/generalization. Actually the Investment banking firms in this link aren’t the norm of tech and finance. There are many others. Some have training programs. Some don’t. But someone with experience esp in a high knowledge job can hit the ground running. My spouse hires a lot in tech and I’ve been in IB. A couple of years under the belt makes a colossal difference in skill sets. Some firms/hiring managers won’t even touch recent college grads for good reason. They don’t have the time to onboard these kids esp if there isn’t an intern program. Larger companies have groups to help but small and mid size boutique firms need everyone heads down esp now with short staff being the norm.
First year pay is a function of the job market at graduation unless the student has committed to a job at salary. There are some great research studies written about students overall lifetime salary based on the year they graduated college. Graduate into a recession and it can affect one for life. Amazing but makes sense. Yes, pay is a function of performance, year over year. But in these industries( tech and finance) job hopping happen a lot esp based on huge salary offers to get experienced hires in the door. The money difference can be huge.
I don’t know. I agree they are not in the thousands as is the case with Amazon for instance. There is another company at the same pay level that is not in the article that I know has a 140 interns in the US this year. It is likely that part of the industry could add up to a 1000 interns altogether, with lower initial pay (like 10k a month) for some of the other firms.
Don’t the BB IBs have a 2 year analyst program? And they let the kids go after that. So I didn’t think there is room to hire other analysts in their place. The associate hiring from business school is a different cohort.
You are looking at a very small subset of companies who hire for these jobs. I think maybe your experience/observations here is reflecting that. 
The list in the article is a small list :-). I did not say that is representative of the industry. Maybe the title of the thread could be slightly different
Well, you are either talking about and limiting the thread to the article in the link, which is fine. Or you are opening up the conversation to tech and finance which IMO makes more sense in terms of broader interest. The issue with any article is the perspective of the writer shapes and limits the ideas.
Tech and finance are wide categories and have many types of jobs and salaries. There are certainly mainly interesting aspects in both fields. The economics of hiring remain the same across all jobs. Tight job market higher salaries even for recent grads.
I’d also throw out this idea. Some students believe that a high starting salary is the end all, be all. I don’t. The firm is equally important. This applies to both tech and finance. Work at a well known firm and you can take yourself almost anywhere. Work at a firm for the $$ alone and you might have fewer options. I mention this as students often think a high salary equals the best opportunity. They need to look at the bigger picture.
Many in Generation Z prefer a work life balance over additional compensation.
This is generally true. My comment on performance is only to suggest that the first part of the finance list in the article comprises marker making firms, and the pay is a function of what you make for the firm. Year to year.
This is also true in theory, but in practice, there is strong correlation between initial pay and long term pay, unless you are talking about a startup situation or you are picking the equivalent of a no-name company instead of Goldman or similar for a 10% pay difference. Kids are very aware of these tradeoffs. I hear very nuanced discussions about this. Kids in high school may not have thought of all these issues, but kids in college when confronted with these choices think very carefully.
Actually, I have a small data set of family members. None have thought of this at all. I don’t think that undergrads have someone in the fields they pursue who they can talk to. I know I didn’t. Neither did my spouse. We were on the cutting edge of several fields. People didn’t even know what we did when we explained it.
The strength of the initial pay and long term pay I mentioned upthread regarding the firm is an entirely different concept. If you work for firm let’s call it A, well known amazing place, there is a great likelihood that someone will hire you later for the name of that firm. IF you work for firm B with a lower visibility, they will OFTEN pay you more just to get you rather than let you go to A. You are at B, have fewer initial opportunities in the first few years and that means your career has fewer branches which can lead to MUCH more money in the years ahead.
In both these industries over the last 30 years, people are making more money not on their annual salary increase but on bonuses and job hopping. And building their skills. I’ll leave the start up discussion out of it as 99% of them go nowhere. We often hear just about the few. We’ve been there too. The only ones who make a lot are founders and very early hires ( sometimes). Things will definitely be different for this generation but I’d advise my family members to build valuable skills and get paid upfront. Leave the start ups to once you’re established and have money saved.
I’d also tell family and friends kids to plan strategically. Look at jobs 3-4 levels above and see what hard and soft skills you need then get them. Be invaluable and you can name your price.
This is a great thing. How did they figure it out so soon? Wish I knew this in my 20’s/30’s.