Those starting their careers during Covid are suffering from burnout and need help

The pandemic has been monstrously unfair in so many ways, and one of the most evident is the clash between people in established careers and those starting out. But there is a further and less widely-reported distinction between the experiences of young people in different walks of life. At one extreme are lawyers.

Here is a typical example of the efforts they are making to retain and incentives junior staff. According to an internal memo a big international law firm, Milbank, is handing out bonuses of up to $64,000 (£46,000) to associates in the US, UK, Brazil and Asia. Its chairman, Scott Edelman, writes: 

“The Firm is off to a great start to the year and your tireless dedication, resilience and enthusiasm have allowed us to deliver the highest level of client service, while remaining engaged with the Milbank community and serving the broader communities where we live and work.”

The performing arts, by contrast, have not had a great start to the year at all. For the West End in London and Broadway, in New York, it has been a catastrophe. In the previous year, Broadway supported almost 100,000 jobs. Now there are hopes of a reopening – but maybe not until September. In London, the official guideline is “no earlier than 17 May”, but full performances may well take longer. On a three-year view, theatres will doubtless be pretty much back to normal, but for the summer at least the outlook is at best cloudy and at worst catastrophic. 

So what is happening here? There is an obvious story and a hidden one. The obvious story is the shutdown is a very partial one: some chunks of the economy are normal, while others are shuttered. It is profoundly unfair and you can have an argument about the necessity of it all, but it is what it is.

The hidden story is the impact on the job market of the massive tidal wave of a boom flooding the financial markets. The outward signs of the boom are everywhere, with US stock markets at all-time highs and a string of takeovers and mergers. But behind this flood is the demand for people to do the grunt work: sifting through the propositions, sorting out the legal paperwork and so on.

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This work is unseen. Everyone is working harder. Fund managers and their advisers are sitting in the apartments on 10 or more Zoom conferences a day from clients and companies trying to create deals, whereas 18 months ago there would have been three face-to-face meetings and some phone calls. If a company in Tokyo raises some new money from investors around the world, someone has to prepare the documents, make sure they are signed in the right place, courier some of them to the management company in New York, or more likely to the manager’s holiday home on Long Island. If you are a 20-something Goldman Sachs employee you might be working a 100-hour week, which is widely reported because it is a top firm. Barely reported, though, are the millions of other people in less prestigious enterprises, working just as long hours and getting paid a lot less. 

So what happens next? The first question is what happens to the boom, for while that continues demand for labour will continue. The answer is anyone’s guess, but we know it won’t go on forever. While it does, it will suck in ambitious, talented people. The investment banks will get cleverer at framing reward packages that support people wanting to build careers – less of this stuff of sending young workers luxury gift tokens or Peloton bikes as a thank-you, more the promise of long-term skills development. 

That would be a big plus. Viewed rationally, what people starting out on a career need most is help to shape that career in the way that best deploys their talents, and by so doing, brings the greatest benefit to the companies that have hired them. It is about money, of course, but it is also about much, much more. Training people during the pandemic has been one of the hardest tasks. I suspect that career development will be the single most important reason people need to go back to the office, and will do so.

There is something else. The jobs market is one of supply and demand. The developed world now has a sharper distinction than ever before between jobs in demand, such as investment bankers, and jobs not in demand, such as actors on Broadway. This is brutal, and it raises a question. What happens to supply?

Will we find that more people, whatever their talents and ambitions, choose careers where there is strong demand? If it does, and financial and business services attract a wider range of talent, they will surely become more diverse and fulfilling places to work. I would hope that financial services will become broader too. This is not to suggest that budding opera singers should try instead to become corporate lawyers. It is to suggest that the financial services industry needs to attract people with different skills and from different backgrounds. And it needs to learn why some of its present work practices are such a turn-off.