I remember when "working at the bank" used to be the shining example of a stable, well paying, middle class white collar job. Now it is borderline minimum wage. Another profession swallowed whole by the internet. Sucks because there are fewer and fewer jobs nowadays that keep money in the local community.
That has changed, though; the actual bankers are mostly gone from (or powerless at) the branches. Last time I had an issue with Chase they pointed me over to a phone to sit on hold.
As a previous Chase customer, I can only say that they are horrendous and as a financial services consumer, one can do much better at just about anywhere else. Use a credit union, use a brokerage, but for the love of god, avoid a commercial bank entity at all costs (Chase, BoA, Wells, etc).
Depends on the country and weight class of the financial institution, but among e.g. U.S. money center banks, branch bankers have been successively de-skilled for the last ~3.5 decades or so.
It is still nominally a white collar occupation but has, indeed, suffered in terms of prestige, compensation, and socioeconomic makeup of workforce versus other middle class mainstays, against a backdrop where the upper edge of the middle class is doing exceptionally well for itself.
Citation available if I Google for the academic papers but the handwavy version is “I write about this sort of thing for a living so uh self-cite for the moment.”
My grandmother worked for a bank for the better part of her life. She used to bring old punch cards home to use for notes/grocery lists. My mom and I used to drive through her teller window and send her cookies through the tubes or the document slot.
In a time where money can be zipped around the world in seconds, and most transactions are cashless, what exactly is the advantage of 'keeping money in the community'?
Who do you think is paying for the roads, parks, schools around you? Is it Chase/Amazon/Apple/Google? Or is this stuff funded by taxes collected from local businesses and their employees? What happens to your town when the money in the latter category drops to 0?
The federal and state governments aren't paying to maintain your neighborhood. And they together contribute <50% of the budget of your local schools. If these mega corps don't operate in your city, they aren't contributing to it financially in any way.
>If these mega corps don't operate in your city, they aren't contributing to it financially in any way.
But by your own admission they contribute at least a portion of the budget for local schools? I'm sure state and federal funding ends up at the city level through a multitude of other programs as well (eg. medicaid). Moreover, such companies have to exist somewhere. Your city might not have an office of megacorp A, but it might have an office for megacorp B. That doesn't mean you should only buy stuff from megacorp B, because it's more efficient for companies to consolidate their operations and adopting this attitude would make everyone worse off.
> In a time where money can be zipped around the world in seconds, and most transactions are cashless, what exactly is the advantage of 'keeping money in the community'?
Living in a community that isn't poor and decaying?
When money leaves a community, it means that it won't be used to employ people in that community, buy goods in that community, or generate tax revenue for public good in that community. The market's relationship to the community can become much more extractive.
Maybe more than money, let’s say assets. If no-one care about local community, then one can have all the world money in their digital wallet, there will be no place on earth where putting their human body in a safe and enjoyable place.
Perhaps the COVID situation saw a temporary exodus from the cities, but it seems since most people have returned. It would appear that people still care about concentrating assets in a community. That is, after all, why cities exist.
Wait till big tech starts buying banks. Cuz banks are really struggling worldwide to keep up with the rate of change in tech and finance. So we aint seen nothing yet.
Bank of America's decision to raise its minimum hourly pay highlights how financial institutions are adapting to support their employees. Similarly, community banks like ic credit union customer service here https://www.pissedconsumer.com/company/ic-credit-union/custo... aim to serve local customers with accessible services. If you're seeking more details on IC Credit Union’s customer service, check the review platforms mentioned earlier, where feedback helps you understand customer experiences better. Despite challenges, both big banks and smaller institutions continue to adjust policies and practices to improve overall service
By all official accounts, "everything has tripled in price" is flat out false. Moreover, the minimum wage has gone up in most states. Looking at the top 10 states by population, 7 had minimum wage bumps between 2022 and 2024[1], and in some jurisdictions easily exceed inflation[2]. Finally, most of the states that didn't have minimum wage increases are still on the $7.25 federal minimum wage from 2009, at which time inflation was at historical lows. Needless to say, the opposition to minimum wage increases probably can't be boiled down to "inflation".
Is it common also for such... still white collar jobs I suppose to be paid by hour? In Europe, such jobs have always monthly salary in contract, or yearly, and basically nobody knows their hourly wage, since nobody pays them by hour worked.
Consultants/contractors are a different story, but such employees here are normally perm employees.
I don't know if I would classify a bank teller position as being white collar. It's more of a service industry position, like being a cashier. And as such, hourly pay is appropriate as they aren't making enough to be exempt for salaried (hourly pay is actually better here as they're mandated extra pay for working overtime).
Banks are in the service industry (as is just about everything else; only resource extraction and manufacturing are excluded), so not just "more of". It is definitively a service industry position.
> like being a cashier.
The physical action of the work is a lot like being a cashier, but the environment in which the work is done is usually different, and that environment (especially with respect to the type of clothing the people usually wear within that environment) is what traditionally defines "white collar". As such, tellers are considered white collar by most people.
Except crucially the pay isn't very good for tellers, whereas it's better for proper bankers / branch managers / etc. I think "does the job pay well" and "is it not manual labor" are both more important aspects of what white collar means than literally what you're wearing to do the job. I'm a FANG SWE and we mostly dress like slobs, but it's absolutely white collar despite the literal attire because it's a highly paid job in an office environment.
Pay is clearly irrelevant. White/blue collar is not defined by pay. Certain tradesmen are earning as much as SWEs – sometimes even more – but are considered blue collar by most. Again, it is about the environment in which the work is done.
Office environment is key to what you say. That is why you would be considered white collar. The literal white collars may be gone, but what you call "dressing like slobs" is just a modern adaptation of the same white collar idea.
Now, as it pertains to tellers, banks are typically considered to be an office environment, thus why most consider them to be white collar.
You've claimed this twice, but I would guess that almost no one thinks a bank teller is white collar.
Sure they work in an office environment, but their role is more similar to the cleaning crew than to the branch manager.
Nothing about the day-to-day work in terms of autonomy, education, responsibility or any other key intangibles of the job match "white collar". It's akin to being a secretary or a mailman or working in a call center.
You'd guess wrong. We have record keeping around how most people use words, and according to those records "white collar" is used in this fashion of: "relating to the work done or those who work in an office or other professional environment."
And you confirm that they work in an office environment, so that bit isn't in question. Perhaps you are confusing most with all? It is certain that not everyone sees "white collar" that way, but we're not talking about everyone.
It seems to be a cultural thing. Perhaps by thinking about it hourly, it is implied that the contract is fully ephemeral and the corporation can nullify it on very short notice - which is certainly true in the US. Employee protections are much stronger in Europe and people get much better benefits (e.g. 5 weeks of paid vacation) even in these entry level positions.
It's very similar in the UK where plenty of full time jobs try to act like some sort of temp thing. Salary quoted as hourly rate, zero contractual hours, etc. In other words, in all aspects the employee is expected to do whatever the company demands. If they demand zero hours worked, the employee will work zero hours, and if they demand 40 hours a week, that's what the employee has to work.
In my view this should be basically illegal. Either make it a contract work where employees turn into service providers who can have multiple clients (that is true contractors), or make it full employment with pre-defined minimum hours worked so that the terms of engagement are clear for both sides.
I haven't been in a bank very often in years, but when I have I've noticed how few tellers there were and they were running around trying to help as fast as they could but there weren't enough bodies to cover all the cars / people.
How often this is the case I don't know.
It makes me wonder if it is purely pay for each individual worker, as much as it might be conditions surrounding it.
I've worked jobs where the pay was not great, but the culture and atmosphere were great, and it was fun. I've worked jobs where the pay was better, but the culture and atmosphere were horrible and i wanted out so bad ... I would have told you I wasn't paid enough, but that wasn't the whole story.
Wait, cover all the cars? I barely understand drive through ATMs, but are you saying they have drive through tellers too? Every time I think Canada is basically America lite I hear something like this and it boggles my mind.
Yes, it's typical in the US to have a drive-thru lane at a bank branch. You can send items back and forth using those pneumatic tube things. Are they not common in Canada? Here is a short video showing how they work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5pVJ8ID0DQ
That seems slower than getting out. Only advantage I can see is for people with mobility issues (thought even then leaning out would be a challenge) and making it less likely to have bank robberies.
With FedNow instant payments now available, I would expect check volume to continue to decline, negating the need for physical transfers of instruments at banks (both checks and cash). Branches will end up as advisory and sales touch points; Capital One is marketing them as cafes, for example.
Yeah, I'm going along assuming a share cultural context and then I have to stop and do a double take that reminds me some things are very much not the same.
This is a big one - pay is livable (I’d argue $24/hr is not, generally) but not great. Doesn’t compare to other technical fields with the same educational and experiential requirements, hours are challenging, and guess what there is a nursing shortage!
"there is a nursing shortage" - My wife has said that for the past 3+ years (she finished school a year and a half ago) - but if that were the case there'd be bidding wars and wages would skyrocket. I don't buy the "nursing shortage" myth.
Shortages are more endemic. I would suspect the issue is more prevalent in rural areas. Temp or travel nurses probably fill the gap until permanent positions can be filled.
> The company says that this pay raise, from $23 per hour currently, will affect “thousands” of its 212,000 employees. The wage increase will particularly affect tellers and other customer-facing employees, such as call-center workers.
> Several big banks have increased their starting pay for hourly workers in the past few years, in part due to the difficulty of attracting workers to these relatively unglamorous and non-remote-friendly jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that banks will need to fill some 27,000 teller positions every year for the next decade.
> Bank of America has been raising wages relatively aggressively for its hourly workers since early 2019, when it paid $15 per hour. The bank has previously said that it plans to pay all such employees $25 per hour by next year. And even today, the company is already paying significantly above the median wage for all U.S. bank tellers, who earned $18.10 per hour in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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