Financial Crisis Didn't Push Bankers from Industry, LinkedIn Reports

The spikes in LinkedIn activity can be attributed to a variety of drivers. Barclays, for example, absorbed many Lehman Brothers employees -- and let a few go. The same situation unfolded for Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, not to mention JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns. So, LinkedIn asks, "Where did all these employees go?"

A popular belief, since the blood flowed on Wall Street in September 2008, is that many of the financial crisis casualties simply left the financial services industry. LinkedIn, however, says that this "just isn't true." Blogging for the company, DJ Patil explains, "There are a handful of people that did transition to other industries and start new careers, but most stayed in the financial space."

And it's possible to track the winners, at least from a talent perspective. Patil explains:

To be specific, other than two acquiring companies (Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and Nomura acquired Lehman Brothers' franchise in the Asia Pacific region), Barclays was by far the biggest beneficiary, scooping up 10% of the laid off talent, followed by Credit Suisse at 1.5% and Citigroup at 1.1%.

Through LinkedIn, we can see what may have taken years to shake out otherwise, if anyone would have noticed. The realization of a trend years after it has unfolded isn't likely to happen -- and if it does, there's a good chance nobody will care.

What we can see now, thanks to the heightened visibility fueled by social media, is that the job market in this sector may not be in as rough a condition as we thought. Professionals have been able to stick around, and the flight to other industries that seemed sensible probably won't be necessary after all. There's still plenty of unemployment, but at least the profound disruption we thought was in the air probably hasn't materialized.