The potential bad news: another crash could take place within three years, despite a long-running bull market and an improving job market. This according to the CEO of one of the “too-big-to-fail” banks that arguably helped cause the last one – JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon.
The good news: if you work for one of those institutions, it won’t necessarily mean the end of your career. Whether or not the 2010 Dodd-Frank regulations turn out to be sufficient to head off another financial shock, downturns in the market can also be cyclical.
That said, the Great Recession caused the permanent loss of tens of thousands of lucrative jobs, and the big banks were forced to pare down riskier operations like derivatives trading. As a result of the increased regulation, the banks have had to beef up their compliance and risk-management staffs. Those are good skills to have in financial services these days, according to John Challenger, CEO of employment services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and could prove to be safe havens in the event of another downturn in the markets.
Challenger also points to accounting and financial analysis as viable paths in the current environment. Those in search of a lucrative banking career can still turn to an area like private equity for the time being, but perhaps not after the next crash, Challenger says.
Another fly in the finance ointment: technology and trading algorithms, which some feel is eliminating jobs on the Street during good times.