More Than Half Of New MBAs Will Earn Over $150K Per Year: Survey
Last summer, a survey of MBA students found widespread confidence in their ability to command strong salaries in a post-pandemic world.
A year later, the world isn’t quite past the coronavirus pandemic, but that bullish outlook on MBA salaries is looking positively prescient.
Training the Street, the nation’s largest financial services learning firm, today (June 16) released the results of a survey showing that despite a tightening Federal Reserve, volatile markets, and a Covid-19 pandemic that just won’t quit, MBAs from top B-schools in the United States are poised for a big payday — with enough future job security to push for better work-life balance in the bargain.
TTS has conducted its Training The Street (TTS) MBA Employment Survey for 14 years. In 2021, more than half of respondents with an internship or full-time offer said they expect to make an annualized salary of over $125,000, while a huge majority — 74% — said they expect to make at least $100,000. Turns out they may have been underestimating their earning potential. In 2022, of the hundreds of students currently enrolled in a U.S. business school who responded to TTS online poll, more than half reported they will be earning more than $150K per year.
Perhaps bigger news is that despite higher earning expectations, a large percentage say they want to work either remotely or in a hybrid model — and many, seemingly undaunted by looming economic uncertainty, say they’re willing to take a substantial pay cut to do so.
”Despite the growing economic headwinds, newly-minted MBA students are in a great position because employers — from Wall Street to VCs, PE firms, consultancies, large companies, and promising startups — are all vying to lure top business-school graduates amid a very tight labor market,” says Scott Rostan, CEO of TTS, which provides training courses for Wall Street banks and financial institutions.
JUST 12% WANT TO WORK FULLY IN-PERSON
TTS’s survey of 318 students at the top B-schools across the U.S. between April 11 and May 27, 2022 reveals that 53% said they will be earning annualized salaries of over $150K per year, including 5% who will make over $200K annually. But MBAs don’t want to work bankers’ hours — or even report to the actual bank — to make bank: The survey found just 12% said they prefer to work “fully in-person,” compared with 53% who would like to be in-person three to four days a week and 31% who would prefer one to two days a week in-person. Only 5% of students said they would like to be fully remote.
(Views on in-person work may be hardening: In last year’s survey, TTS found that 18.1% preferred to work “fully in-person.”)
In the 2022 poll, more than one quarter — 27% — said they would consider taking less compensation/a lower salary in exchange for the ability to work remotely full-time. Of those that said yes, almost half — 45% — would consider taking between $10,000 to $20,000 less in their annual salary for the ability to work remotely full-time.
“We’re also seeing a significant shift in the traditional Wall Street workplace as the pandemic altered the way we communicate and work across various industries and channels,” Rostan says. “Flexibility and the option to work remotely are now important factors for prospective financial services employees.”
JOB OFFER SATISFACTION IS HIGH
Those surveyed expressed a high degree of satisfaction with job offers, TTS reports. Over three-quarters of respondents — 77% — reported feeling either “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their recent job offers; only 11% of respondents said they feel dissatisfied with their job prospects.
Additionally, only 4% of respondents reported not receiving a job offer yet, compared with 26% of respondents a year ago.
Also noteworthy: In response to the question of where they see themselves working in five years, 39% of students said “private equity/venture capital/hedge fund,” more than double the response from 2021, where 18% selected this category.
