Median salary
$175,000
$110,000 – $600,000
Typical entry route
Bachelor's degree
~3 years to median pay
Outlook
Stable demand
Investment banking is the most openly transactional career on this site: you sell your twenties, and the bank pays you more at 22 than most professionals earn at 40. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what you plan to do with the exit.
What the job actually is
Banks advise companies on mergers, acquisitions, and raising money through debt or equity. As a junior, your actual job is building the machinery behind that advice: financial models, pitch decks, and data rooms. An analyst’s real skill set is Excel, PowerPoint, and surviving comments from a vice president at 1am. You are not making deals happen; you are making the people who make deals happen look flawless. The strategic judgment arrives years later, if you stay.
What it really pays
Banking pay is unusually transparent because every bank matches every other bank within weeks. The spread by region is real and persistent:
| Region | Typical median (total comp) |
|---|---|
| United States | $200,000 |
| United Kingdom | $160,000 |
| Western Europe | $130,000 |
| US elite boutiques (Evercore, Centerview) | $220,000–$260,000 |
First-year analysts in the US clear $170,000–$220,000 all-in. Associates reach $300,000–$450,000, vice presidents $450,000–$700,000, and managing directors earn $1 million+ in good years, but MD pay is mostly bonus, and bad deal years cut it hard. London tracks New York at a discount; continental Europe pays materially less for the same hours.
The number that matters more than any of these: hourly. At 85 hours a week, a $190,000 first-year package works out to roughly $43 per hour. Plenty of jobs on this site beat that.
The realistic path in
- Start in your first year of university: banks recruit summer interns 18+ months in advance. Sophomore programs and spring weeks (UK) are the real front door.
- Get the grades and the school. A 3.7+ GPA at a target school makes everything easier. Non-target students break in every year, but through relentless networking, not applications.
- Do 50+ coffee chats: banking hires from referral pipelines. Cold applications without a name attached convert at close to zero.
- Convert the internship: 70–90% of full-time analyst seats go to returning interns. The summer is a ten-week interview.
- Decide your exit early. Private equity recruiting starts within months of your first day. Analysts who drift miss the window.
The honest downsides
The hours are the headline, but the texture matters more: it is not 90 hours of deal strategy, it is 90 hours of turning comments, fixing footers, and waiting for a managing director to review a deck at 11pm. Attrition is by design: most analyst classes shrink by half within three years. Health, relationships, and hobbies take real, documented damage.
And the pyramid is honest about your odds: very few analysts become MDs, and the ones who do are effectively commission-based salespeople with excellent spreadsheets. Go in for the training and the exit, with your eyes open, and it is one of the best launchpads in global business. Go in for the lifestyle you saw on screen and you will be gone in eighteen months.
Why it's worth it
- The highest structured early-career pay of any mainstream job: $170k–$220k all-in at 22
- A brand-name exit ticket: private equity, hedge funds, and corporate strategy recruit almost exclusively from banking
- You compress ten years of business education into two
The trade-offs
- 70–90 hour weeks are the norm, not the war story, with weekends included during live deals
- Recruiting is brutally credential-driven: target schools and early networking dominate
- Most of the work is formatting, checking, and re-checking; the glamour is thin
Frequently asked questions
How much do investment bankers make in their first year?
At a US bulge-bracket or elite boutique, first-year analysts earn a $110,000–$125,000 base plus a bonus of roughly $50,000–$100,000, so $170,000–$220,000 all-in. London pays about 20–30% less in dollar terms; Frankfurt and Paris less again.
Do you need an MBA to become an investment banker?
No. The main pipeline is straight from undergrad into an analyst seat via a junior-year summer internship. The MBA route exists (it lands you at associate level), but it is the recovery path, not the default one.
How many hours do investment bankers actually work?
Surveys of analysts consistently show 70–90 hours per week, with 100+ hour stretches on live deals. Banks have added protected weekends and monitoring since 2021, but the deal calendar still wins when it conflicts with your Saturday.
What do investment bankers do after banking?
Most analysts leave within two to three years. Private equity is the classic exit and typically pays $300,000+ all-in for first-year associates at large funds; hedge funds, corporate development, and startups take most of the rest.
Salary figures are researched estimates in USD, aggregated from public salary data across the US, UK and EU. Actual pay varies by location, company and experience. Last updated 7 July 2026.