One Wall Street firm pays its Gen Z college freshmen $8,600 a week—more than Americans make in nearly two months.
The battle for skill to level up is very expensive. And it starts before graduates enter the workforce. Wall Street trading firm Susquehanna International Group is offering an incredible offer for master’s and PhD students: $8,600 per week—or a total of $86,000 for a 10-week summer program.
The posting is specific to multiple traders and quantitative research roles in 2027 in their New York and Philadelphia offices, according to the job listing.
Undergraduates with less experience can still earn around $7,600 per week, depending on the situation, with potential signing bonuses added on top.
The pay pales in comparison to the average US worker, who earned about $1,235 a week during the first quarter of this year—meaning they would have to work nearly two months to earn what SIG interns earn in one week.
The compensation comes despite Wall Street’s reputation for long hours and chronic stress. To sweeten the deal, interns also receive free housing, complimentary breakfasts and lunches, and access to social events ranging from poker tournaments and dinners to sporting events.
The benefits are partly a reflection of SIG’s unusual beginnings. The company can trace its roots back to the late 1970s when six college students—including future billionaires Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik—met at Binghamton University and later founded the company. Decades later, the company continues to invest heavily in students, providing aspiring talent with the resources needed to create careers in a highly competitive industry.
A lavish salary is a staple on Wall Street: interns bring home thousands each week—but finding a place is tough.
SIG internship salaries are eye-catching, but good pay has become the standard across the industry’s top trading companies as they compete for top talent. For example, Jane Street advertises summer intern pay as $300,000 a year, (but it’s only three months and is paid about $5,700 a week), while interns at Citadel and Citadel Securities earn about $4,300 to $5,800 weekly in their base salary, depending on their professional work.
Getting caught? Getting into one of those positions is much more difficult than getting into Ivy League schools.
Goldman Sachs said its internship acceptance rate has remained below 1% for three consecutive years, making the programs among the most competitive in corporate America.
“I think the quality of the nominations speaks to the strength of the opportunity and the ability of the talent we are attracting around the world,” said Jacqueline Arthur, Goldman’s head of human resources. Good luckhe added that about 40% of the bank’s partners started as institutional hires.
The rising salary also highlights the growing divide in the AI labor market. In the past few years, some prominent executives in the tech industry – including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – have warned that productive AI could significantly reduce the need for white-collar workers, and many of Gen Z are more pessimistic than ever about the future.
At the same time, companies are spending unprecedented amounts of money to hire dozens of engineers and researchers who can build cutting-edge AI systems. Some compensation packages have been worth tens of millions of dollars, and in some cases, up to nine figures. Among the most prominent examples is ScaleAI founder Alexander Wang, a 29-year-old college dropout who reportedly received a package from Meta worth more than $100 million.
While Wall Street won’t be offering that kind of money for entry-level talent anytime soon, firms are increasingly willing to stretch their pocketbooks more than ever to secure the problem solvers they believe will power the next generation of entrepreneurs.
