Like death and taxes, job cuts in financial services never seem to go away, even in a strong economy.
An annual survey of publicly announced job cuts in financial services, conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm, showed that 29,486 jobs were eliminated this year through November, against only 28,652 lost in all of 1996. Neither figure takes newly created jobs or insurance jobs into account.
According to John A. Challenger, the firm's executive vice president, the cuts were attributable mostly to industry consolidation and increasing automation, such as the growth of ATMs and electronic stock trading.
"Layoffs are going to happen, despite our being in a halcyon job period in terms of unemployment," he said.
More financial services jobs were created in 1997 than lost, according to the federal government, but the number of job cuts alone may provide a kind of misery index, measuring the number of persons whose careers got involuntarily interrupted.
Every layoff, after all, means another financial services professional's life has been disrupted. Many of these workers are forced to find work in another city or develop a new area of specialization.
But there's a silver lining. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was actually a net gain of 121,000 financial services jobs through November.
Still, Ryan Allen, an analyst with the bureau, points out that the cuts by themselves indicate "fluctuation within the financial industry" during the year. And as merger mania rolls on, expect more industry turmoil, Mr. Challenger said.
