Wall Street Firms Cut 34,000 Jobs, Most Since 2001 Dot-Com Bust

Bloomberg (03/24/08); Onaran, Yalman
Slammed by at least $200 billion in mortgage losses and writedowns, big Wall Street banks such as Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. have eliminated an aggregate 34,000-plus jobs over the past nine months. According to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, that represents the biggest employment cutback since 39,800 were sacrificed as part of the 2001 dot-com meltdown. "This crisis is much worse than 2001 and we don't know how long it's going to last," says Jo Bennett of the New York-based executive search firm Battalia Winston International, who speculates that the job losses could climb to "more than 100,000 in a few years." As fallout from the subprime mortgage debacle and the ensuing credit crisis has deepened, the payroll reductions have been felt by everyone from senior-level executives to employees in the mortgage departments of banks and securities firms to workers involved in securitization, asset management and investment banking.