Wall Street banks propel Dallas to second behind NYC in number of finance workers
There’e big dollars flowing into Big D.
Dallas has emerged as a new financial mecca, trailing only New York in number of finance workers as Wall Street firms seek out lower-cost leases and cheaper workers.
Dallas-Fort Worth, now the country’s fourth-largest metro, has surpassed Chicago and Los Angeles during the pandemic to become the No. 2 place to nab a finance job, according to Bloomberg.
Three of New York City’s biggest banks — Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Bank of America — have plans to expand their footprint in Dallas in hopes of capitalizing on the influx of people that moved to one of the fast-growing states during the pandemic in search.
The cost of living is about 40% less than it is in New York, according to Salary.com, thus bringing down the salaries needed to satisfy workers.
Financial and investment analysts, for example, average $102,000 a year in Dallas, per Bloomberg, almost 30% less than the going rate in New York.
Average salaries also tend to run lower because of the types of jobs available in Texas, where a greater portion of the employee base is made up of back-office operations like engineering, customer service and loan processing, the outlet reported.
High-profile examples of the bet on Dallas include Goldman Sachs, which broke ground on a three-building, 5,000-person campus in trendy Victory Park neighborhood just outside of downtown Dallas in October.
The nearly $500 million, 815,000-square-foot development was made possible with the $18 million in tax breaks the city of Dallas granted the Wall Street bank last July in exchange for bringing as many as 5,000 jobs into the city.
When the campus opens in 2027, staffers can expect to enjoy underground parking, a first-floor retail space, a 1.5-acre urban park, a hotel and residential towers, documents filed with Dallas’ city plan commission showed.
When The Post sought comment from Goldman, a company spokesperson pointed to chief operating officer John Waldron’s comments at the ceremony, when he called the city of Dallas “a hub for talent, innovation and opportunity.”
Waldron also noted that its Dallas digs would mark the bank’s “second-largest office in the Americas, outside of New York City, our global headquarters.”
Wells Fargo, which has long had a foothold in Texas, is about to increase it with a glittering $500 million campus for as many as 3,000 workers in the suburb of Irving, roughly 12 miles outside of Dallas, according to Bloomberg.
The bank received more than $30 million in tax breaks to construct the 850,000-square-foot North Texas hub, which consists of two buildings and a 4,000-space garage that’s set to open by the end of 2026.
And last month, the second-largest US bank by asset size, Bank of America, held a groundbreaking ceremony for the 30-story high-rise that will be erected less than a mile from Goldman’s forthcoming Dallas headquarters.
Jennifer Chandler, the market president for Bank of America in Dallas, touted the benefits of being located in the middle of the country.
“We obviously love the central location,” Chandler told Bloomberg. “It’s very easy to get to and the quality of living is strong,” she added, noting the region’s two airports and 14,000 Dallas-based workers.
The Dallas-Forth Worth area is now home to more than 380,000 people who work in the industry, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It remains well behind New York, the No. 1 finance job hotspot with 809,000 people employed in the industry.
Finance firms now occupy 28 million square feet of office space in the Dallas area, second behind New York, Bloomberg reported, citing data from Cushman and Wakefield.
Smaller financial firms that have made the move south include Charles Schwab, which officially re-designated its headquarters from San Francisco to Westlake, Texas — roughly 32 miles from Dallas — after it acquired TD Ameritrade in 2020.
The firm — which oversees more than $7 trillion in assets — opened a 1.1 million-square-foot campus that was more than three years and $100 million in the making, with amenities that include a “café, training center, multiple collaboration spaces, employee services and more,” according to the investment firm’s website.
A year later, $24 billion Los Angeles-based fund Canyon Partners opened a Dallas office, and Atalaya Capital Management — a $10 billion investment advisory firm — followed suit in 2022, marking the opening of its only post outside of NYC.
“Covid gave everyone an appreciation for what you can do remotely,” said Atalaya founder Ivan Zinn told Bloomberg. “With the growth of asset management, hedge funds, in Dallas in particular, you’ve seen that talent pool diffuse.”
