Wall Street Hiring Jumps

Happy days are here again for Wall Street workers. The big banks have gone on a hiring spree over the last few months and competition for the best execs is heating up, sending salaries upwards and spurring firms to start offering perks and hefty bonuses again, Bloomberg reports. Recruiters say the size of guaranteed bonuses is edging up to pre-financial crisis levels.

"When markets fell to hell in a handbasket, people were lucky to get a job with a base salary, and everything else would depend on their performance,” says the director of a financial industry recruitment firm. “As we start to see people being recruited from one firm to another, as opposed to being recruited from unemployment, the need to make some kind of guarantee is becoming more necessary.” (More financial sector stories.)