Penn students and professors expressed concern over recent hiring slowdowns at major investment banks and consulting firms in interviews with The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Since the start of the year, several finance companies — including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Deloitte US — have laid off thousands of employees and cut junior positions. Penn faculty attributed the industry changes to recent federal actions including trade tariffs and terminated government contracts.
According to Penn Career Services, finance and consulting are the most popular postgraduate destinations for undergraduate students. This includes nearly half of College students, 29% of Engineering students, and over 83% of Wharton students. Popular individual hiring firms include Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, and JPMorgan.
In a statement to the DP, Wharton professor Itamar Drechsler wrote that recent government policy on issues such as tariffs and government contracts have led to significant “uncertainty” in the financial industry.
“The expectations were that mergers and acquisitions and underwriting business would grow robustly this year. However, the outlook turned negative,” Drechsler wrote.
Drechsler added that consulting firms — which often rely on significant government contracts — have been affected, pointing to recent stock price contractions for firms like Accenture.
Wharton professor Itay Goldstein similarly wrote in a statement that the “possibility of an upcoming recession” was affecting new hiring.
“Uncertainty is not conducive to new investments and dealmaking. Hence, it is not too surprising to see some slowdown in hiring, especially in areas that depend a lot on new deals, such as in investment banking,” Goldstein wrote.
Both Goldstein and Drechsler note that the downturn in hiring seemed to be cyclical rather than a lasting trend within the industry.
“I don’t think there is any reason to believe that this is a structural shift. Of course, we need to hope that the right policies will be selected down the road,” Goldstein wrote.
Students say that the challenging market has forced them to look outside of the finance and consulting industries for opportunities.
Wharton sophomore Revanth Poondru wrote that the “disheartening” state of the finance and consulting industries led him to more positions that “aren’t traditionally target[ed] to increase [his] odds of success.”
Goldstein said that, despite some concerns, he believes that the current issues facing these industries are “temporary changes.”
“I do not think that students should change the course of their career. As in the past, we see that slowdowns present benefits to going back to school, starting new degrees,” Goldstein wrote. “But even for those who go on the job market, there are jobs, it is just that the competition might be fiercer for some time.”
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