JPMorgan is reportedly using computer tracking to monitor junior bankers’ hours — comparing their self-reported time sheets with internal data to catch underreporting amid ongoing concerns about Wall Streeters working themselves past the point of exhaustion.
The nation’s largest lender will give junior investment bankers computer-generated reports measuring how long they actually work, the Financial Times reported.
The estimates draw on employees’ digital footprints — including video calls, keystrokes and scheduled meetings.
“Much like the weekly screen time summaries on a smartphone, this tool is about awareness — not enforcement,” JPMorgan told FT in a statement.
“It’s designed to support transparency, wellbeing, and encourage open conversations about workload.”
The Post has sought comment from JPMorgan.
In 2024, JPMorgan and Bank of America imposed limits on junior bankers’ hours after the death of a 35-year-old BofA associate who reportedly worked 100-hour weeks on a $2 billion merger.
JPMorgan imposed a cap of 80 hours per week while Bank of America rolled out a new timekeeping tool that requires associates to specify how their hours were spent.
Jonathan Alpert, a New York-based psychotherapist who works with Wall Street clients, said junior bankers already report “intense pressure” from long hours, being constantly available and fear of falling behind. He warned that added monitoring could reinforce a “never off the clock” mindset — and “accelerate burnout rather than prevent it.”
“The deeper issue is cultural,” Alpert told The Post on Friday. “On Wall Street, overwork is still often treated as a signal of commitment. Until that changes, tools like this risk treating the symptom, not the cause.”
Months earlier, Leo Lukenas III, 35, a former Green Beret and married father of two young children, died of a heart attack in 2024 after logging workdays of at least 16 hours at BofA.
Social media outcry laid the blame at the feet of Lukenas’s manager, Gary Howe, BofA’s co-head of the financial institutions group. Howe deleted his LinkedIn account shortly after Lukenas’s death.
Lukenas was so worn down by his grueling schedule that he had been looking for a new job in the weeks leading up to his death.
In 2013, BofA enacted an 80-hour cap on junior bankers’ work hours following the death of a 21-year-old intern, Moritz Erhardt.
Erhardt, who interned at the bank’s London offices, died of what officials described as an epileptic seizure. Reports indicated that he’d worked until 6 a.m. three nights in a row before his death.
Carter McIntosh, a 28-year-old Jefferies associate in Dallas, was found dead in his apartment in January of last year.
His death was later ruled an accidental overdose from fentanyl and cocaine. Colleagues and media reports said he had been working close to 100-hour weeks.
A subsequent investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that BofA managers had been flouting the company’s 80-hour workweek cap.
Wall Street’s grind culture has long demanded punishing hours from junior bankers, with analysts and associates routinely pulling all-nighters to meet client deadlines and chase multimillion-dollar deals.
The workload is often seen as a rite of passage in an industry where stamina and round-the-clock availability are prized as much as technical skill.
The payoff can be enormous: entry-level bankers can earn up to $200,000 in salary and bonuses, with far bigger paydays down the line.
That lucrative upside — along with exit opportunities in private equity and hedge funds — continues to draw recruits despite growing scrutiny of the toll the job can take.
The issue of brutal hours burst into public view in 2021 when a group of first-year Goldman Sachs analysts circulated a leaked slide deck detailing brutal conditions including 100-hour work weeks, chronic sleep deprivation and deteriorating mental health.
The presentation, which quickly went viral, described junior bankers as “abused” and pushed top executives to acknowledge the problem.
Goldman’s leadership responded by pledging to enforce the 80-hour weekly cap and improve working conditions, but complaints about long hours have persisted across Wall Street.
