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JPMorgan Chase has started to scrutinise whether the hours junior investment bankers claim to work match up against activity electronically logged by the bank’s IT systems, as it seeks to guard against overwork.
The bank will now issue reports to junior bankers that compare computer-generated estimates of junior bankers’ work week against their self-reported time sheets as part of a pilot scheme, according to people familiar with the matter.
JPMorgan plans to roll out the programme more widely across its investment bank, the people added. The estimate is based on employees’ weekly digital footprint, including video calls, desktop keystrokes and scheduled meetings.
“Much like the weekly screen time summaries on a smartphone, this tool is about awareness — not enforcement,” JPMorgan said in a statement. “It’s designed to support transparency, wellbeing, and encourage open conversations about workload.”
Wall Street banks are famous for the punishing workloads required to meet the demands of clients which pay multimillion-dollar fees. In return the banks offer salaries which can stretch to $200,000 for entry-level analyst and associate roles.
There has been broader scrutiny of these long hours following the death two years ago of a young investment banker at Bank of America. One of the bank’s interns died in London in 2013, which a coroner said may have been linked to long working hours.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, first-year Goldman Sachs analysts compiled a slide deck documenting their arduous hours, while in 2024 JPMorgan appointed a senior banker to oversee the wellbeing of junior staff. JPMorgan has since curtailed weekend work and also capped the working week for younger employees at 80 hours, typically based on self-reported numbers.
This process has proved imperfect as some junior bankers misreport the hours they work. One issue is they declare fewer hours than they have actually spent to avoid being pulled from existing deals or to ensure they can still be added to new ones.
Workplace surveillance technologies have become more commonplace since the pandemic but have proved controversial with some workers who argue that they are unnecessarily intrusive and violate privacy rights.
At Goldman Sachs, junior bankers on occasion have been pulled aside and told to rest when its internal electronic monitoring was triggered.
“Management monitors junior banker staffing and activity levels and regularly adjusts the workloads of our teams,” Goldman said in a statement.
BofA launched a tool in 2024 to monitor the workload of interns and junior bankers and flag when it exceeded 80 hours in a week. The system, which tracks reported work hours on a weekly basis, is designed to help spread the workload among employees according to their capacity.
Investment banks are in the process of using AI tools to automate or streamline laborious and time-consuming tasks assigned to junior bankers, such as preparing pitchbooks, running financial models and summarising corporate earnings calls.
The technology has been welcomed by younger employees for giving them more time to work on more analytical tasks such as advising clients on strategy. But it has also fuelled concerns of a potential slowdown in hiring in the industry.