Four months ago, we profiled Citigroup Inc. ($C) and its global hiring efforts. At the end of 2018, it's worth taking another look at the third-largest bank in America, especially because Citi recently reduced its workforce by 3,000 people.
Right now, Citigroup lists 4,800 job openings on its careers page. That's a decline of 1,000 employees since we last checked in. But there's good news hidden in this data. That is, if you're a data scientist or machine learning engineer.
This also marks the second straight year in which Citi decreased job openings towards the end of the year. In 2016, the number of listings increased dramatically in November before dropping slightly into the new year.
A look back at 2017 data also reveals a major difference in company hiring over the past two years. While the number of Citigroup job openings peaked above 6,200 individual listings for at least a third of the year (from March to September), there was only one time in 2018 — May 19 — with that amount of listings or more (There were only 6,197 openings on May 18, which rounded up to 6.2k on the chart).
Among the interesting trends included within the overall decline is who Citigroup is hiring... And who they aren't (as much anymore, at least). Four months ago, Citigold Associate jobs were far and away the position where Citigroup sought people for the most. While it still is hiring for its Citigold branch — essentially its wealth management arm of its massive business — the number of job openings with "Citigold" in the title decreased by over 64% between September and today.
Jobs that listed the word "Investment" in the title also declined during the same time period as well.
Meanwhile, job openings that listed terms having to do with some of the biggest recent developments in FinTech — machine learning and data scientist — were recently at its highest levels yet.
(An earlier version of this chart showed the same data as the "Investment" chart. It's been updated to reflect the actual data.
In June, the Financial Times reported that Citigroup could cut as much as half of its technology and operations staff in its investment banking business over the next five years. While the company has not commented on these claims, it is interesting to note this report when looking at a shift in job openings.
Another trend seen over the past four months a sudden drop in openings that are based in New York, New York. On November 10, there were 285 job openings listed in New York, a decrease of 36.38% from the day prior.
It's a peculiar sight given that Amazon ($AMZN) will soon move into One Court Square, AKA the Citigroup Building. However this seems to be a minor anecdote in the larger trend, as the overall job openings for the international company weren't affected that much from the sharp decline in NYC jobs.
