Financial Analyst

Also known as: Finance Analyst, Investment Analyst

Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.

This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:

1

UC BerkeleyFinance

2

UMichFinance

3

UPennFinance

4

CornellFinance

5

UT AustinFinance

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Junior analyst work — building financial models, summarizing earnings calls, cleaning data, formatting pitchbooks, generating recurring reports — sits squarely in AI's sweet spot, and the largest US banks have publicly named AI as their top headcount lever. BofA's CEO called AI the "No. 1" priority for working down headcount, Wells Fargo's CEO described AI's long-term effect as "extremely significant," and Citi is targeting 20,000 job cuts by end of 2026. The New York Times has reported firms weighing cuts of up to two-thirds to junior analyst classes, and OpenAI's "Project Mercury" enlisted 100+ ex-bankers to train models on exactly this work. Anthropic's Economic Index also flags hiring of workers aged 22-25 in highly AI-exposed roles as having slowed since ChatGPT launched. That said, the realized impact lags the rhetoric. Year-over-year headcount at JPMorgan, Goldman, and BofA was flat-to-up through late 2025, and BCG and NYU Stern analysts told Fortune the AI-layoffs narrative was partly "smoke and mirrors" — cover for normal post-overhiring trim. Banking analyst roles "resist automation quite robustly" because deal complexity and zero-error tolerance still demand human judgment. The likely path is the one already visible at the Big Four in accounting: smaller graduate classes, AI-augmented juniors expected to deliver more, and a tougher first rung for new grads even as senior dealmaker headcount holds.

Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.