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.”
