Banking hires hit a floor while the open seats stayed put

The July labor numbers came out on September 1, and one pair of figures in them is worth ten minutes of your time if you are a commercial banker.

Finance and insurance hired at a rate of 1.4 percent in July. In June it was 1.9 percent. A year ago it was 2.2. In bodies, that is 92,000 hires against 129,000 the month before, a drop of 37,000 in four weeks.

The open seats stayed put. The same industry was carrying 285,000 openings at the end of July against 283,000 at the end of June. Demand held steady while the hiring fell off a shelf.

I see this on my desk before I see it in the data

Searches that used to close in nine or ten weeks are running fourteen. The clients have not gone cold. There are simply four interviews now where there used to be two, a credit case study that nobody asked for three years ago, and a final conversation with the CEO for a seat two levels below him.

The money is there. The FDIC put industry net income at $90.1 billion for the second quarter, up $9.7 billion or 12 percent from the first, on a 1.37 percent return on assets. These banks can afford a producer. They have decided they would rather take another month than take the wrong one.

Slow and closed look identical from where you sit

If you sent your resume somewhere in July and heard nothing for five weeks, the reasonable conclusion is that nobody is hiring and this is a bad time to look.

The openings number argues with that. The seat you applied for is very likely still open today. It will probably still be open in October. Nobody wrote to tell you, because a slow process produces the same silence a rejection does.

What it does to your timeline

Every number below is longer than it was two years ago, and you should plan against the long version.

First conversation to signed offer used to run six to ten weeks in my market. Plan on twelve to eighteen. Plan on three or four rounds. Plan on being asked to walk through your actual production, line by line, by someone who has the reports in front of him.

That changes what preparation is worth. In a fast market, being available wins seats. In a slow market the process itself is the filter, and being ready beats being available. I have watched stronger producers lose in round three this year to people who had their numbers organized and their references already warm.

What this data does not say

Four things, and I would rather say them than have you quote this to someone who knows better.

The series is called finance and insurance. It puts insurance carriers, securities firms and credit intermediation in one bucket. Commercial banking sits inside it and does not drive it. I use this series because it is the best monthly read anyone publishes, not because it is a bank number.

It is national. This table has no state cut. The West region moved the same direction, with hires down 180,000 in July while openings rose 135,000, but that is every industry across thirteen states, so I cannot hand you a California banking figure and call it verified.

Openings are counted on the last business day of the month, which means a posting that has sat unfilled since March gets counted again every month. A flat openings line can mean steady demand or it can mean stale postings, and this table will not tell you which.

And July is one month, still marked preliminary. June's quits rate for finance and insurance read 0.9 percent when it was published in August. In the September table it reads 1.0. Revisions move these numbers. Treat one month as a signal and wait to see whether August confirms it.

What I would do between now and January

Start now, because a long process is a gift when you begin early and a problem when you begin late. If you want to be somewhere by spring, the first conversation happens this month.

Get your production onto one page. New relationships booked this year, new money in, not the portfolio you inherited. You will be asked for this, and the people who fumble it lose in the third round to someone with a weaker book and a better answer.

Take the recruiter call even if you are staying. Twenty minutes buys you current price information on yourself, and you cannot read an offer properly without it.

And if you applied for something in July and heard nothing, follow up this week. The seat is probably still sitting there.

If you are a commercial banker thinking through your next 12 months, let's talk.

More Insights: Market Intelligence · Hiring & Retention · Career Moves