Wall Street's Junior Analyst Is Disappearing — And Banks Are OK With That

Wall Street has always been the dream for ambitious finance graduates. But in 2026, that dream is hitting a wall — an AI-shaped one. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup are cutting junior analyst classes by up to two-thirds, and it's not a hiring freeze. It's a structural shift. The jobs that once defined an analyst's first two years — building pitch decks, running financial models, combing through compliance docs — are now handled by AI at massive scale. And the banks themselves aren't shy about it. JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon put it bluntly: "The technology will eliminate jobs." But here's the twist: it's not all doom and gloom. Bank of America is bucking the trend, keeping 4,000 entry-level spots open. And Goldman's own CEO admits that investment banking is still fundamentally "an apprenticeship business." The question for HR leaders everywhere is: what does that apprenticeship look like when the grunt work is gone? Today we dig into the data, the executive quotes that backfired, and what this really means if you're recruiting in financial services.