Banks employ 19,900 fewer people than a year ago

The September jobs report came out on October 2, and the line I'd circle is a small one. Depository banks employed about 1,767,000 people. A year earlier it was 1,787,000.

That's 19,900 fewer jobs, down 1.1 percent. It's a slow slide, about 1,300 jobs a month since July. It matters if you're deciding whether to stay or move. The industry you work in is shrinking a little every month.

Fewer people, same open seats

Two weeks ago I wrote that finance and insurance carried 353,000 open seats in August against 110,000 hires, or 3.2 seats per hire. That post is here. Put it next to this report. Banks are posting seats they can't fill, and they're carrying fewer people than they did last year.

A payroll shrinks when more people leave than arrive. Posting a seat and filling it are different events, so both facts can sit side by side.

Which seats went

My read, from 25 years of watching banks trim: branch and back-office roles go first, and merger integrations do most of the cutting. Producers and credit officers tend to go last, because they bring in the revenue and sign the loans. That's a read, and this table doesn't show any of it.

The numbers do say that lenders and credit services outside depository banks shrank faster, about 3.0 percent over the year. And financial activities as a whole is down 129,000 jobs since May 2025.

What I'd do with a shrinking payroll

If you produce, your leverage is your book. Put it on one page: new relationships booked this year and new money in. Leave out the portfolio you inherited. A bank holding headcount flat tends to want proof of production before it pays for potential.

If you support production, ask your manager how the work gets covered when a role goes away. Ask while things are calm. You'll get a straighter answer in October than you will the week a merger closes.

If a recruiter called and you said no, take the next call. Twenty minutes gets you a current price on yourself, and that price matters more when the total number of seats is slipping.

What this data does not say

Five things, and I'd rather say them than have you repeat this to someone who knows better.

The series counts every job at depository institutions, from tellers to CEOs, at banks and credit unions. It can't separate commercial producers or credit officers from everyone else.

It's national. I didn't pull a California series, so I can't tell you California banks shrank by the same amount.

August and September are preliminary and get revised. A 1.1 percent change over a year is small enough that a revision could move it. The unadjusted numbers tell the same story (1,782,600 to 1,763,300, a drop of 19,300), and they get revised too.

It's a headcount. It says nothing about how many people left or how many were hired.

And the 3.2 seats per hire comes from a different BLS survey covering all of finance and insurance, so I'm putting two reports side by side that weren't built to match.

If you're a commercial banker weighing a move, let's talk.

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