The winning trio: US work authorization, bachelor’s degrees, and health insurance – insights from Indeed’s financial job market analysis

Introduction

Delving into the financial job market, the recent analysis of Indeed’s company information and job listings dataset highlights key trends: US work authorization is the most sought-after qualification; Administrative Assistants lead in job roles; health insurance reigns as the top benefit; full-time positions dominate the market; and North America claims an overwhelming majority of finance jobs, leaving Europe in its wake.

Key insights:

• US work authorization tops finance qualifications with 30,966 requests from employers, while Bachelor’s degrees come in second at 14,570 requests.
• Administrative Assistants dominate financial sector roles with 16,518 entries (2.44%), followed by Software Engineers at 10,051 entries (1.48%).
• Health insurance is the most offered benefit in finance roles, with a staggering 201,544 occurrences (73.97%).
• Full-time jobs overwhelmingly lead the global financial markets, with 327,803 listings.
• North America dominates the regional distribution, hosting 86.89% of the finance job market, while Europe trails behind at 6.82%.
• Finance employers value qualification and experience in comparison to administrative and technical skills.
• Finance institutions provide career fulfillment for professionals, but stress indicators remain high.

Top 10 Requested Qualifications From Finance Job Roles

To understand the top 10 most sought-after qualifications for finance roles, we examined the initial curated dataset of job listings from Indeed. Our data filtration process involved discarding entries with missing or inaccurate information related to the ‘qualifications’ attribute. 

Doing so ensured that our analysis was built upon a robust foundation of 77,276 high-quality data points of finance-based job listings. This section provides valuable insights for finance professionals seeking to understand the dynamic landscape of high-demand qualifications in the finance industry.

The findings are as follows:

• US work authorization: 30,966 requests
• Bachelor’s degree: 14,570 requests
• High school or equivalent: 14,338 requests
• Customer service (1 year): 7,378 requests
• Loan origination (1 year): 4,040 requests
• Associate degree: 3,697 requests
• CPA certification: 3,546 requests
• Microsoft Office (1 year): 2,790 requests
• Microsoft Excel (1 year): 2,002 requests
• Accounting experience (1 year): 1,859 requests

“With over 7,000 finance jobs demanding at least a year of customer service, the importance of interpersonal skills and customer relationships is undeniable in the financial sector.”

The high number of finance roles based in the U.S. dominates the findings from the role qualification analysis as U.S. work authorization tops the list. Following in second and third place is the educational requirement for job applications in the finance sector. Notably, a bachelor’s degree is the most requested qualification for a finance role. This finding is reinforced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics identification of key roles in business and finance occupation, in which all roles require at least a bachelor’s degree.

Advertised job roles still require interpersonal and interactive skills in the finance industry. Many finance roles are customer-facing, and many financial decisions take over several weeks or months in which the client-customer relationship is a deciding factor for final decisions made. Our findings reflect the importance of soft skills in finance roles, as at least a year of customer service is requested in over 7,000 finance jobs advertised.

One surprising finding is that the importance of technical skills such as Microsoft Excel and Office, although high, is not as requested in most finance roles. A number of conclusions can be drawn from these findings. Here are two:

• Employers value qualification and experience higher than administrative and technical skills
• Administrative skills are expected from applicants with high qualifications

The information revealed in this role analysis enables job seekers to get an overview of what combination of skillsets is required for most roles in the financial sector, allowing applicants to focus on the most valuable qualification, education and filling any skill gap. Financial market analysts could extrapolate a trend or pattern associated with the relatively small amount of administrative and technical skills to inform conclusions, projections and analyses on the financial sector.

Distribution of Job Roles across the Financial Sector

Understanding what roles dominate the Indeed Job listing dataset proves beneficial in a number of ways. Firstly, job seekers can understand what roles are in high demand, relating to skillsets to focus on and chances of success, whilst employers gain an insight into the competitive landscape for talent in the financial markets. For the analysis of the distribution of job roles across the financial sector, 677810 job listings were analysed.

The distribution of roles in the financial sector is as follows:

• Administrative Assistant: 16,518 entries (2.44%)
• Software Engineer: 10,051 entries (1.48%)
• Senior Software Engineer: 9,393 entries (1.39%)
• Staff Accountant: 7,573 entries (1.12%)
• Receptionist: 7,091 entries (1.05%)
• Senior Accountant: 6,532 entries (0.96%)
• Mortgage Loan Officer: 6,347 entries (0.94%)
• Business Analyst: 5,521 entries (0.81%)
• Front Desk Receptionist: 5,516 entries (0.81%)
• Financial Analyst: 5,102 entries (0.75%)

Administrative roles like Administrative Assistant, Receptionist, and Front Desk Receptionist are more typical in the financial sector, accounting for approximately 4.3% of the total dataset. Accounting and Management roles remain the core hiring focus and function for the financial industry. These roles are required to ensure accurate month-end financial reporting, adherence to compliance and regulatory rules and overall effective leadership from managers, executives and C-suites. Professionals looking to progress to upper management roles within the finance industry can begin to prioritize the skills attributed to these roles, such as communication, analytical ability, collaboration etc.

“The prominence of Software Engineer positions showcases the growing impact of technology on financial institutions, driving digital transformation and FinTech innovation.”

The findings from the analysis also reinforce the apparent impact that Software is having on the financial institution. Examples of software activities within the finance sector are the automation of administrative tasks, streamlining existing processes to aid in decision making and development of economic models.

Software engineering positions are the top 10 roles within the financial market. This top placement could be primarily driven by initiatives to begin and maintain digital transformation in the legacy systems utilised by financial institutions. Accompanying the prevalence of software development roles in finance requires more information design and Documentation roles. Generally, the demand for technical-based positions also aligns with the rapid growth of financial technology(FinTech). 

Accenture reported that FinTech venture deals received over $25 billion in funding in the US alone in 2019, a 54% increase from the previous year. Financial institutions generally embrace digital solutions, data analytics, and automation to streamline processes, enhance customer experiences, and gain a competitive edge.

Top 10 Benefits Offered In Advertised Finance Job Role

The initial filtered Indeed job listing dataset was additionally filtered to remove invalid entries for the ‘benefit’ attributes of the data point to understand what top 10 benefits the finance role offers. This resulted in using 272,365 for the benefit analysis conducted in this section.

The findings are as follows:

• Health insurance: 201,544 occurrences (73.97%)
• Paid time off 158,012 occurrences (58.01%)
• Dental insurance: 154,939 occurrences (56.90%)
• 401(k): 149,045 occurrences (54.70%)
• Vision insurance: 141,787 occurrences (52.04%)
• Life insurance: 85,267 occurrences (31.30%)
• 401(k) matching: 85,148 occurrences (31.25%)
• Disability insurance: 49,232 occurrences (18.08%)
• Tuition reimbursement: 46,242 occurrences (16.98%)
• Employee assistance program: 39,221 occurrences (14.39%)

The top 5 benefits offered in advertised finance job positions are standard insurance and benefits that most job applicants expect and are typical offerings across the job markets. But only 30% of the analysed job listing offered more extensive benefits such as Life Insurance and 401(k) matching. 

The importance of life insurance can often go overlooked. It’s reported that at least “30% of Americans believe life insurance is only for end-of-life expense”, and in 2022, only 50% of Americans are said to have life insurance. This number is declining, as it was 2% higger the year before and 59% in 2018. Employers looking to provide a competitive package within the finance industry can incorporate life insurance in the benefits offered for advertised roles. Giving life insurance as an employee benefit is a separating factor that could provide a competitive edge over 70% of jobs analysed.

“With tuition reimbursement and employee assistance programs underrepresented in finance job benefits, financial institutions can attract talent embracing continuous personal development by prioritizing employee upskilling.”

From the analysis, the tuition reimbursement and employee assistance program have relatively low percentages compared to the rest of the benefits. Tuition reimbursement is a benefit that refers to employers covering part or all of the cost for employee education while employed; education, in this case, could be a university degree program to online remote courses; the type of education covered is often left at the discretion of the employer. From the analysis, a logical conclusion is that employee upskilling isn’t a priority benefit most financial institutions offer. But in the age of automation and the wariness of AI replacing administrative jobs, HR managers can take advantage of the low offerings of these benefits and use them to attract talent that embraces continuous personal development. 

The importance of tuition reimbursement is reinforced in the 2019 Working Learner Index released by Bright Horizons, where it is mentioned that 82% of individuals surveyed for the report found that tuition reimbursement improved their professional contributions to the company, and 84% felt better equipped for future work opportunities. However, an argument could be made that employers within financial institutions have reduced the offerings of tuition reimbursement as an adaptation to the uptake of interest in employees for the program. InStride’s whitepaper released in 2021 on understanding tuition assistance mentions that only 25% of employees interested in tuition reimbursement start an application for the program.

Distribution of Job Types in the Global Financial Markets

An overview of job type listings distribution provides insights that employers can utilize to understand what job types are currently in demand. Job seekers can use this information to understand the likelihood of obtaining a specific job type to match their lifestyles.

To gain this insight, we analyze 571359 advertised job roles from the Indeed Job Listing dataset, all with allocated job types and spanning regions such as North America and Europe.

Some job listings were written in a non-English language; therefore, a preprocessing step was taken before analysis to translate non-English job types to their English translation and then aggregate the job types to conduct the analysis. For example, Staż is the Polish word for an internship, por contractor, Spanish, is converted to contract job type. 

The findings are as follows:

• Full-time 327803
• Part-time 34160
• Contract 23995
• Permanent 16397
• Temporary 7253
• Permanent contract 4020
• Fixed-term contract 2782
• Internship 2448
• Fixed-term 2034
• Temporary contract 1126
• Seasonal 785

The analysis revealed 41 job types from the processed dataset, and the findings are unsurprising. Over 70% of advertised jobs in the finance sector are for full-time positions, indicative of the high demand for full-time employees. Part-time(8%) and contract positions(5.6%), although less dominant in the distribution of the job types, the presence of job listings offering these flexible positions is prevalent in the distribution. 

An insight from this is that the financial sector is open, in some parts, to a flexible working arrangement, based on project allocations.

Finance professionals can take advantage of these insights in the following ways:

1. HR teams can use the information presented to benchmark their workforce on the finance industry trend revealed from this insight. More specifically, this can identify areas for improvement and innovation if more job types and flexible roles are considered.
2. Job seekers and finance professionals can utilise this information to plan a career trajectory. Understanding the job types available in an industry allows for the managed expectation of work-life balance and future lifestyles. For example, those seeking temporary short-term work across different financial institutions might need help finding such roles as these make up only 1.7% of the advertised positions.

Country and Regional Distribution of Finance Roles

Understanding the distribution of roles in the financial market helps determine the number of significant decisions, such as where financial institutions decide to locate their headquarters, where professionals decide to begin job seeking and even where to allocate investment. This section takes the Indeed Job Listing Dataset and analyses 434676 job listings to extract insights from the distribution of the roles based on country and region. As usual, a data cleaning and filtering process was conducted on the initial dataset to obtain the resulting dataset utilised for this section.

The distribution of the (top 10)  country allocation of financial roles is as follows:

• “US” 326280 – United States
• “CA” 33636 – Canada
• “GB” 16860 – United Kingdom
• “UM” 15357 – U.S. Minor Outlying Islands
• “AU” 7057 – Australia
• “BE” 6974 – Belgium
• “CN” 5266 – China
• “IN” 4517 – India
• “BR” 1770 – Brazil
• “PL” 1600 – Poland

The United States (US) dominates the distribution of finance roles globally, with over 70% of advertised positions in the dataset based in the US. This heavy concentration of finance roles in the US is not surprising, as the US is home to the headquarters of some of the most critical financial institutions globally, such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley etc.

“Canada’s emerging financial market ranks second in the number of advertised finance roles, signalling the country’s growing prominence in the global financial landscape.”

The top three countries (US, CA, and GB) collectively represent approximately 86.7% of the total finance roles in the dataset, indicating that the finance industry is heavily concentrated in these countries. The remaining countries in the top 10 (UM, AU, BE, CN, IN, BR, and PL) account for most of the other 13.3% of the finance roles. Among these, the United States Minor Outlying Islands (UM) has the most finance roles, with 15,357 jobs, representing 3.5% of the total finance roles.

Zooming out to observe the job role distribution from a regional perspective paints a clearer picture of finance job roles across the globe. One thing to note is that the data cleaning process outputted 434633 job listings, a few job listing shy of the number used for the country code distribution. This reduction can be noted down to missing values for the regional attribute.

The distribution of the regional allocation of financial roles is as follows:

• North America (NA) – 377,668 entries, making up about 86.89% of the total dataset.
• Europe (EU) – 29,644 entries, accounting for approximately 6.82% of the total dataset.
• Asia (AS) – 14,388 entries, which represents around 3.31% of the total dataset.
• Oceania (OC) – 7,379 entries, constituting about 1.70% of the total dataset.
• South America (SA) – 4,574 entries, making up roughly 1.05% of the total dataset.
• Africa (AF) – 911 entries, accounting for approximately 0.21% of the total dataset.
• Americas – 69 entries represent around 0.02% of the total dataset.

The regional distribution reaffirms the United States’ global financial superpower position. The US plays a significant role in the financial market, with over 80% of the financial roles advertised in the NA(North America) region. Europe is the second largest financial hub to the findings. Europe is home to top financial centres such as London and Frankfurt. The presence of Asia points to the emerging financial hubs in these regions; this indicates an opportunity for growth, particularly in regions such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai.

Africa, Oceania, and South America have a considerably small job listing distribution. A number of factors can account for this; more notably, this can be due to comparatively smaller economies and a lack of financial centres in these regions. Although this can also be seen as an opportunity for growth and investment for financial institutions.

Top-Paying Roles for Financial Professionals

Through a thorough data analysis of the Indeed Company Info dataset, we extracted essential salary information and headquarters locations, enabling us to provide a comprehensive view of compensation trends in the finance sector. We offer valuable insights into income patterns in this field by carefully examining salary data and categorizing it into yearly and hourly rates for roles within the dataset.

The primary objective of our analysis is to determine average salaries by job title and location. By presenting the findings in descending order, we highlight the most competitive positions and locations regarding compensation. This information provides finance professionals with a well-informed understanding of the highest-paying opportunities in the finance industry.

Roles

Grouping similar roles and conducting an average of the salaries enables an analysis that reveals the top-paying roles for financial professionals.

Key findings and insights:

• Top-paying role identified: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with an average salary of $169,092.
• High-demand roles: Software Engineer and Risk Manager, indicated by a higher number of data points.
• Understanding salary variations across roles help finance professionals make informed career decisions, attract top talent, and identify growth areas within their organizations.
• Data Analysts have the highest average hourly salary at $32.90, aligning with the yearly average wage of $65,331 for a Data Analyst in the United States.

Examining the average salaries of various financial roles provides valuable insights for finance professionals such as HR managers, job seekers, financial analysts, managers, and CFOs.

One unsurprising finding is the relatively high average salary of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) position, which is $169,092. CFOs play critical strategic importance within a financial institution and are pivotal in managing a company’s economic activities. HR Managers piecing together CFO compensation must consider a high base salary for these position hires.

The dataset analysis also reveals that specific roles, such as Software Engineer and Risk Manager, have more data points than others. One possible assumption from this insight is a higher demand for these positions in the finance sector. Although roles with lower data points do not automatically mean less demand for these roles, they could also point high level of speciality and experience required. Examples of this in the company info dataset are in roles such as Investment Banker and Trader, which have lower data point counts but higher salaries.

This overall analysis offers valuable insights into the salary landscape of the finance industry, and the salary patterns amongst the different roles follow that of the financial sector, albeit with the dataset needing more data resources. But by comprehending wage variations across different roles, finance professionals can make more educated decisions about their careers, attract top talent, and identify growth areas within their organizations. 

Analyzing the hourly salary data amongst job roles in the finance sector provides a different perspective to one gained through a yearly salary analysis. It gives insight into what financial companies offer part-time and contract-based positions.

Data Analysts top the list with the highest average salary amount paid per hour, $32.90. When converted to a yearly salary($64,000 – $65,560), the hourly salary obtained from the dataset coincides with the average wage a Data Analyst I Salary in the United States earns, which is $65,331. However, both types of compensation structures have their advantages and disadvantages. Data analysts play significant roles within financial institutions, especially since the era of big data and analytics has made decisive actions from data more efficient, automated and meaningful. From the analysis, it’s reasonable to suggest to job seekers and those in academia within the finance industry to consider analysis skills and the potential for higher hourly compensation.

A high-level analysis points to a relatively narrow range of average salaries across the ten job titles. The lowest average salary is for Billing Specialists at $19.94, while the highest is for Data Analysts at $32.90. This smaller disparity in compensation might suggest a more balanced distribution of salaries within the finance industry compared to other sectors. Some roles with only a low data point count, such as Asset Manager and Business Analyst, have relatively high average salaries. This may suggest that these positions are highly valued and specialized. Individuals in these roles are well-compensated for their expertise.

CEO Approval Ratings in the Financial Sector

The Indeed company info dataset provided insight into the company’s CEO approval ratings from previous or current employees. A company’s leadership is strongly associated with the overall company’s success. In a competitive industry such as finance, this statement is rooted in almost all company activities, from hiring and customer acquisition to investments. The CEO approval rating is an encompassing score that quantifies the sentiment of leadership employees within finance companies.

From analyzing 278 financial companies, the average CEO approval rating was 73.18%. Our dataset analysis is aligned with Glassdoor’s study on CEO approvals in 2021.

CEO approval ratings translate to a number of information for different finance professional segments. Job seekers can use this understanding of CEO approval to gauge the working environment of companies and sectors. Higher approval rating points to solid leadership and rapport among employees.

Approval ratings help HR managers understand areas for improvement in the management team from the bottom up. By understanding employees’ sentiments towards managers and other high-level positions, actions can be taken to improve overall employee satisfaction and company culture.

High CEO approval ratings in challenging times point to confidence and a company’s ability to navigate significant challenges frequently occurring in financial sectors. This information is beneficial for investors and analysts that utilize CEO approval ratings, amongst other metrics, to determine the overall external confidence in a financial company’s health and positive prospect.

Sentiment Analysis Level In the Financial Sector

The CEO approval rating is a metric used to get a high-level overview of employee sentiment. The Company Info Dataset explores employee work happiness through questions. The analysis of 1022 finance companies provided insight into the overall work happiness and other employee satisfaction criteria.

Key findings and insights:

• Work Happiness Score (57) and Satisfaction (55) have relatively lower scores compared to other factors, suggesting that finance companies could take more actions to improve employee happiness and satisfaction.
• Stress-free (54) scores are low, indicating that finance roles often involve long hours and high stress, which presents an opportunity for HR managers to implement initiatives to manage stress levels and retain top talent.
• Achievement (65), flexibility (65), and Appreciation (64) have the highest average scores, highlighting that finance roles offer career fulfilment, positive sentiment, and recognition. At the same time, Learning (64) and Purpose (63) suggest that employees find their work meaningful and gain new knowledge.
• Compensation (58), Energy (58), Management (57), and Belonging (55) have average scores, providing opportunities for HR managers to identify areas to boost employee morale and overall satisfaction.

The dataset contains a comprehensive list of questions assessing 14 aspects of work happiness, each with a specific focus:

1. Work Happiness Score: Do people feel happy at work most of the time?
2. Achievement: Do people feel they are achieving most of their goals at work?
3. Purpose: Do people feel their work has a clear sense of purpose?
4. Compensation: Do people feel that they are paid fairly for their work?
5. Flexibility: Do people feel they have the time and location flexibility they need?
6. Support: Do people feel they can get support and encouragement from colleagues at work?
7. Stress-free: Can people generally avoid feeling stressed at work?
8. Appreciation: Do people feel they are appreciated as a person at work?
9. Energy: Do people feel energized by most of their work tasks?
10. Satisfaction: Are people completely satisfied with their job?
11. Learning: Do people feel they often learn something at work?
12. Management: Do people feel their manager helps them succeed?
13. Inclusion: Do people feel their work environment is inclusive and respectful of everyone?
14. Trust: Do people feel they can trust others at their company?
15. Belonging: Do people feel a sense of belonging in their company?

Insight into Work Happiness Score (57) and Satisfaction (55) reveals that these factors are lower than other question categories. Readers can extract a number of suggestions from this insight, one of which is that HR and management teams can take more actions in finance companies to improve employee happiness and satisfaction. Another low-scoring category is Stress-free(54). The finance industry and associated roles are understood to require long hours and tedious commitments from employees. This and several factors lead to a relatively low score for the Stress-free category. However, this finding allows HR managers to actively manage employee stress levels through several initiatives to maintain a competitive edge in attracting and retaining top talent.

Achievement (65), flexibility (65), and Appreciation (64) show the highest average scores, indicating a sense of career fulfilment and optimistic sentiment towards the work, and recognition for the work carried out. Learning (64) and purpose (63) also have moderately high average scores, suggesting that employees typically find their work meaningful and an opportunity to gain new knowledge. These insights indicate that finance roles provide working conditions that foster professional development, personal growth, and a strong sense of purpose. 

Job seekers contemplating a finance career can expect to be part of a dynamic industry that values their contributions, supports their need for flexibility, and offers ample opportunities for learning and achieving their career goals.

Compensation (58), Energy (58), Management (57) and Belonging (55) have relatively average scores. For HR managers, this insight provides opportunities to identify areas for improvement that will boost employee morale.

Altogether relying on just the CEO approval metric can provide a skewed understanding of overall employee sentiment. The analysis extracted from the dataset reveals the importance of a well-rounded approach to employee well-being that considers compensation, allocated work levels, reducing stress indicators and several other factors.

were relevant, exact, and reliable, offering invaluable perspectives into the worldwide financial job.

Conclusion

Leveraging data is the best approach to gain a comprehensive and quantitative perspective of the financial job market’s state and derive insights reinforced by statistical properties. The data analysis conducted in this can act as an enabling factor that encourages finance professionals, job seekers, organizations and institutions to make better-informed decisions and have better chances to gain a positive outcome in a radically evolving economic landscape.

Bright Data offers clean, complete and structured web data that can be used to analyze the ones in this article. The data provided are ready for analysis and reduce the data cleaning, time and monetary overhead of sourcing data in-house.

The analysis conducted from the high-quality data provided by Bright Data highlights the importance of education, experience, interpersonal skills, and technology’s ongoing influence in the finance industry. Professionals can make informed decisions and contribute to the industry’s growth by understanding the top qualifications and benefits offered in finance roles.

Another interesting observation is that the finance industry values relationships, adaptability, and continuous skill development. Finance professionals that want to remain relevant in the industry should stay informed and adaptable by focusing on the most valuable qualifications and skill sets. And an action employers should take is to offer competitive benefits packages to attract and retain talent.

One notable takeaway is the importance of technology and risk management in finance. Software Engineering roles are in high demand, and FinTech companies are emerging as the driving force for innovation within the financial industry. 

Qualitative measures of employee sentiment, such as work happiness, satisfaction and stress-free score, reveal an opportunity for financial institutions to improve. More specifically, proactive HR teams and managers can begin to identify and execute initiatives that boost overall employee morale, which improves talent retention. Finally, our analysis supported the understanding that although finance roles can be very demanding, they offer professionals decent career fulfilment, recognition and growth opportunities.

Data Processing Methodology

To extract valuable insight from the Indeed company information and job listing datasets, both datasets undergo a refinement process. The refinement process involves selecting relevant attributes for insights, data processing and cleaning procedure to improve overall data validity.

Both datasets consist of thousands of non-finance related companies and organisations; to refine the data points to finance-only organisations, roles and institutions, the filtration process of selecting appropriate data points by identifying an extensive list of finance-related terms within the ‘job_title’ and ‘description_text’ attributes for the job listing dataset and ‘name’ and ‘description’ attributes for the companies information dataset.

The filtration process took the job listing dataset with over a million data points to 677,810 job listings more associated with finance roles. In the case of the company information dataset, the filtering process eliminated several irrelevant data points and provided 1022 finance companies with complete data attributes for the following analysis. Supplementary filtering methods are leveraged during the subsequent analysis to concentrate the data points further improve relevancy.

Author Bio
Richmond Alake, an ML expert, empowers countless learners via succinct online articles and courses while applying AI/ML solutions to revolutionize fitness (MiniPT) and content creation (OpenSpeech).