Yes, BAC at its peak in 2010 was around 288k employees. It now runs around 200k ideally. But in 2010 BAC was a major financier of home builders. BAC was acquiring other institutions in mass. It had just ingested ML. It was as bloated with duplication like never before. It was also being bailed out with TARP, which also included restrictions on mass layoffs to help the economy. It took them nearly a decade to get it down to 204k, peaked again in the “great resignation” of 2022 at 217k, and ended 2024 at 213k.
To sit here and say there are crazy mass layoffs coming, is just stupid fear mongering. I’m sure there will be some further adjustments. They have made no secret to want to get it back to the 2018 level of 200k-ish. It all depends on economic demand on the system, as BAC is one of the core money center institutions in the country if not the world.
BAC also shrunk during the last 15 years in terms of business entities. No longer is there a home builder division. What is there is really just unsecured lending to a few majors, that’s it. BAC is not a licensed lender on behalf of Fannie or Freddie, the only institution in the top-10 list not to be. The client selectivity process means roughly 70% of the clients in each major metro area is not banked by BAC. The bank intentionally moved itself to be the bank for the top 1% crowd. The day will come when that won’t pan out well. You never put all of your eggs into one basket. Further, do you think thay 1% is going to trust their business to an AI machine? The flavor of the month techno toy? How many of them have come and gone over the last 25 years? End of the day, people do business with PEOPLE!!