As we have documented in the past, there is ravenous competition for talent on Wall Street, as large investment banks juice up perks to try and retain workers. 

Now, even interns are seeing the benefit. Some interns are even making as much as $16,000 per month, according to a new article by Entrepreneur, which attributes the wage spike to a nationwide labor shortage.

In fact, the report says that in the last year, intern pay has risen by 37.2% at global investment banks, with some interns making as much as $200,000 per year.

Investment banks aren’t just defending themselves from other investment banks, they’re also defending themselves against tech companies that can sometimes offer a better quality of life as a worker. 

Recall, we wrote earlier this year that HSBC was set to double its bonuses for junior bankers in order to try and slow defections. It marked a change for the bank, which paid “less than most rivals a year ago after cutting the bonus pool at its global banking and markets division by 15%,” Bloomberg reported at the time. 

“We’ve got to keep pay across the board competitive,” Greg Guyett, co-head of GBM for HSBC said last month. 

And the competition in the space is real, with investment banks jostling back-and-forth to stay competitive with pay and retain talent for several years now.

At the beginning of 2022, we reported that JP Morgan had raised its junior bankers’ pay for the second time in a 12 month period. 1st-year investment banking analysts are now set to make $110,000, up from $100,000, The Business Times reported last month. 2nd-year analyst pay will also jump up to $125,000 and 3rd-year pay will rise to $135,000. 

Citigroup also said it was increasing pay after a blockbuster year in 2021, moving base salaries for junior bankers up to $110,000.