St. Louis One of the Top 5 Cities Stealing Jobs from Wall Street
- July 11, 2014
When we think about American finance, the default image is of a pinstriped banker on Wall Street. But increasingly financial services is shifting away from the traditional bastions of money.
In an analysis of recent and longer-term employment trends, we have identified the large cities –those with over 450,000 jobs – that are gaining jobs in financial services, a sector that employs 7.9 million people nationwide.
The three metro areas outside the Sun Belt in our top 10 enjoy lower levels of taxation and housing prices. St. Louis, Mo. (fifth), Salt Lake City (seventh), and Richmond, Va. (ninth), have begun to bulk up on financial jobs, largely to the detriment of the traditional money centers New York (44th), San Francisco (48th), Boston (55th), Los Angeles (57th) and Chicago (61st). Despite the current stock market boom, and good times for large banks, financial services employment in these cities has been stagnant in recent years. Since 2008, New York has lost 3.8% of all its finance-related jobs, while Los Angeles’ financial sector has shed 7% of its jobs and Chicago 6.7%.