How State Street propelled itself among the top U.S. employers, according to LinkedIn data

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LinkedIn released its ninth annual Top Companies list, highlighting the 50 best workplaces for professionals to grow their careers in the U.S. Entirely based on LinkedIn data, the list evaluates employers on various elements of career progression from upskilling to getting promoted while at the company.

Eight financial services companies made the list, including some of the country’s largest banks such as Bank of America and Morgan Stanley , as well as list newcomer State Street . Also included is insurance giant State Farm and one of the biggest mutual fund and brokerage firms, Fidelity Investments . Professional services companies EY and PwC , two of the “Big Four” accounting firms, also rank.

The most in-demand skills were fairly consistent across all of the top finance employers, according to LinkedIn’s data. While skills around artificial intelligence and software development are highly sought-after by nearly all of the companies, professionals with experience in commercial and investment banking and capital markets are even more desired.

Last year JPMorganChase held the No. 1 spot on the Top Companies list, but the world’s largest bank has since fallen to No. 8; tech companies now hold the top positions, led by Alphabet, which invests heavily in leadership and development programs and offers tailored courses for managers across all levels, helping to retain and grow its talent pipeline.

Here are the financial services companies featured on LinkedIn’s 2025 Top Companies U.S. list:

Wells Fargo (No. 3): Wells Fargo’s Career Development Program provides professional training and development courses for employees in roles requiring less than five years of experience — part of its partnership with the One Ten coalition to prioritize skills-first hiring. 

Capital One (No. 6): Capital One offers four employee-led internal colleges — such as Credit College and Tech College — where employees can deepen their skills in areas like design thinking and leadership. There are even learning paths within the colleges themselves, like the Tech College’s Machine Learning Engineering Training Program, which is aimed at developing the company’s AI talent via an accelerated five-month course. 

JPMorgan Chase (No. 8): CEO Jamie Dimon has been vocal this year on how JPMorgan is expanding its talent pools and pivoting toward skills-based employment. Around 70% of roles for experienced hires — or candidates with full-time work experience — do not require a college degree.

Bank of America (No. 11): Bank of America is one of the country’s largest finance employers with more than 132,000 employees stateside running its retail, commercial and private banking arms, as well as global markets and wealth management. 

Fidelity Investments (No. 21): Fidelity touts itself as one of the best places for early-career employees and counts more than 77,000 associates among its ranks. 

Morgan Stanley (No. 32): The investment bank is one of the largest employers of financial advisors in the country – a job in huge demand as banks look to take advantage of changes in wealth management.

State Street Corporation (No. 45): Employees of the asset manager and investment management firm are some of the most in-demand candidates from recruiters at other companies. Kathy Horgan, chief human resources and citizenship officer, said that the firm aims to give employees upward mobility to keep them throughout a long career (see more from Horgan below).

State Farm (No. 47): The past year presented challenges for insurance companies as disasters tore through the southeast U.S. and southern California. But State Farm has shown no signs of slowing down in hiring insurance agents and claims specialists.

Click here to view this year’s complete list of the 50 best large employers in the U.S.

State Street is the newest financial institution to appear on LinkedIn’s Top Companies list. Though the company is headquartered in Boston, a minority of staff are located in the U.S. and 53% of staff are hybrid workers.

Emerging tech and data science knowledge are the most common skills among State Street employees – around 28% – along with capital markets and business management experience.

LinkedIn News spoke with Kathy Horgan, State Street’s chief human resources and citizenship officer, about the company’s culture, opportunities for career development and evolution in its recruitment efforts.

Kathy Horgan is chief human resources and citizenship officer at State Street .

Chang: Describe for me State Street’s strategy when it comes to recruiting. And what methods has State Street found to be most effective for attracting and retaining talent?

Horgan: We have a focus on mobility internally and how we create those opportunities for people to move inside and get different experiences and grow their careers – sort of internal recruitment. But we also do our fair share of external recruitment. We're really very focused on trying to create a broad pipeline of external talent, whether that's for jobs that we have immediately or whether it's jobs that we're anticipating in the future, and really trying to hone that pipeline and try to make those matches as we go forward. As I say, we also have a big focus on internal recruitment and trying to do a lot of mobility that way, which I also think is a way of attracting talent. You want to join a company where you can really see your career growing at that company.

Chang: Are there any strategies that you’ve found more effective in creating that recruitment pipeline in the past year or so?

Horgan: One area that I think we've continued to try to refine and amplify is how we think about bringing people in from an early career. So how do you start at an early point in your career here and then continue to grow that at State Street? We've been very focused on a number of pipeline programs. Some of these range from things as short-term in nature as internships and how we're bringing people in to have an experience. As they matriculate through whatever programs they're in, they continue to think about State Street. We also partner with a number of different universities around the world in apprenticeship and co-op programs. 

We have a pretty well-developed rotation program for recent graduates that we've had for quite a while. And it continues to evolve depending on geographic expansion and where we have opportunities for people. From an early-career standpoint, it’s about finding people who we think can evolve with the times. We know that 40% of the jobs in about five years from now don't actually exist right now. So how do you really think about the people that are going to be ready for those jobs as we go forward? So I'd say there’s a lot of focus on the early-careers piece.

Chang: On that note, are there any areas where State Street is particularly focused on hiring at the moment or any fields where the company is looking to expand? 

Horgan: It's very broad-based in a lot of ways. There are areas probably spanning across a variety of areas of technology that are always continuing to be hot. Some of that could be around cybersecurity or how we deploy emerging technologies, inclusive of things like AI. As we think about our business strategy and expanding our business into new areas or growing areas, I'd say from a product area and people that have experience in private markets is a very hot area. ETFs as a product and servicing ETFs is a really big area. I'd say across our controller – our second-line functions – whether that's risk management experience or compliance, legal, these skills are very much in demand here and elsewhere, but we're always looking for those. In our core business and our core operations, we need people that process engineering experience and people who have done business process transformation. And lastly is we need people around data analytics. These are all areas of focus for us in our businesses.

Chang: One of the areas that has helped propel State Street into our Top Companies ranking is educational diversity, meaning having team members with a variety of educational backgrounds and skill sets. How do you think State Street has been able to achieve this, and how does that sponsor a more innovative environment?

Horgan: You want people that can think differently. And some of the thinking maybe comes from experiences, could be educational experiences or different work experiences that people have. You come at problem solving in different ways, and that really is, I think, core to innovation. I think one of the things that we've done is we are not so anchored on specific educational requirements for roles. We really do try to think about the skills and the experiences that people need to do this work. And I think that just allows you to really open up the aperture and draw talent from a variety of different areas. The other thing is because we are such a global company and there are such a variety of educational systems around the world, we're able to draw upon a whole host of different types of experiences. It comes down to a lot of: how do you problem-solve? And not just because something's a problem, but something might be an opportunity. When you have a real diversity of thinking that's happening, you're going to get to more innovation, more creative solutions, more tailored solutions that work for our clients, because it's really been generated by people that have put a whole variety of thinking and problem solving together. 

Chang: About 28% of State Street’s employees are based in the U.S., with a vast majority working in other countries around the world. How is State Street able to sponsor behavior and culture across its workforce in a way that resonates?

Horgan: We spend a lot of time communicating our foundational culture traits. And we really encourage different parts of the company to make them your own. So if you're working in a particular area of the company or a different country, when you talk about care for clients, colleagues, communities, what does that really mean in your particular either unit or part of the world? I think that notion of having this framework that really transcends the full company, but it can also then look and feel and have behaviors associated with it that are very custom, very tailored to your environment or your context, is one of the ways that we found really works.

We also have a lot of what we would call enabling factors or enabling mechanisms to reinforce it. So for one example, we have a common recognition platform where a manager could recognize a person or a team, peers can recognize other peers. It's global and all organized around these culture traits. So when you're recognizing someone, are you recognizing them for choosing to own it or delivering with integrity and speed? That’s a reinforcing mechanism when we think about having conversations around performance; a lot of it is what you did, but the other piece is how you did it. That's all anchored in behaviors that are associated with our culture traits. We have a global wellness program that's very much anchored to this notion of care for colleagues. There are common experiences, common mechanisms that whether you're sitting in the U.S. or you're sitting in China or you're sitting in India or Poland, these things are sort of common threads that really connect everybody. 

Chang: Another area where State Street scored highly was external opportunity, meaning that recruiters from other companies are looking to hire State Street employees. In what ways does State Street help employees grow to the point where now competitors want them?

Horgan: It is probably a variety of things. On some level, going back to the early-careers focus, we are bringing people in and providing a lot of skills and experiences that amplify what people are able to do later on. I think there's rigor around how we think about career development and even within roles. We focus on people acquiring different skills, having experiences, being able to do things. Some of the roles we have really transcend industries, whether that's technology or compliance or even some of these operational roles. They're getting very good foundational experience that makes them attractive for other roles and makes us a bit of a target. 

While financial services companies tout that they are great places for early-career employees and young professionals, the data shows mixed signals when comparing them to others among America’s Top Companies. 

No finance company has more than 10% of employees under 25 years old, according to LinkedIn data. State Street’s young employee headcount is only half of that, but State Farm sports 9.2% of employees under 25. It’s low compared to the list’s frontrunners for young employees, with consulting houses PwC and EY both boasting about 14% of staff under 25.

State Farm also has the highest share of employees in entry-level positions among this year’s top large companies, at 62%, indicating the need for plenty of representatives, claims specialists and insurance and sales associates at the insurance company. JPMorganChase has about half of that, with 32% of employees being entry-level staff, and Bank of America is at the low end with 22% of staff in junior roles.

We take a quick dive into a company making a bet that others are running from.

Tariffs have led to a massive selloff in stocks, with the initial hit starting last Thursday as the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6% and the S&P 500 dropped 4.8%. Since then they are both down 7.8% and 7.7%, respectively, as of the market close Tuesday.

But there’s one group trying to take advantage of the tariff-driven dip: ordinary individual investors. According to a note from JPMorgan, retail investors poured $4.7 billion into stocks Thursday – the highest level over the past decade – concentrated heavily in S&P 500 ETFs, small-cap tech names and the Mag 7 tech companies … except Tesla. 

Though the market has shifted since, the significant influx was a strong sign that individual investors have looked to buy the dip at a time when an ongoing trade war threatens to slow the economy and possibly weigh further on equities. Investors have also continued their heavy collective bet on the tech sector as well as passive investments, both of which have been labeled by asset managers as inflated and expected to deliver low potential returns over the next decade.

Meanwhile, index fund managers may see a windfall in the downturn. State Street data on April 7 revealed record inflows, with its SPDR ETFs trading a combined $208 billion.

Here are the latest updates in the world of finance, private equity, banking, real estate, markets and more:

Jamie Dimon speaks out against tariffs: The CEO of America’s biggest bank warned that tariffs announced by President Donald Trump will raise prices on goods and services in the U.S., not just imported goods. JPMorgan Chase’s chief added in his annual shareholder letter that the economy had already begun weakening before the announcement on “liberation day.” The remarks come as investors raise bets that the Federal Reserve could deliver an emergency interest-rate cut as early as next week to prop up the economy. Click here to read more from Dimon, as well as other finance leaders such as Larry Fink and Bill Ackman.

Credit usage slows: Consumer borrowing unexpectedly contracted in February, the first decrease in three months, as Americans became more cautious about spending. Total credit dropped by almost $810 million, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve, including decreases in credit card balances and auto loans. Meanwhile, the number of Americans tapping their retirement savings in so-called “hardship withdrawals” is as much as 20% higher than the historical average, per data from Empower.

Davos founder to exit after probe: Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, said he will “start the process” of resigning as chair of the Davos organizer’s board of trustees, the Financial Times reported. The announcement follows a probe into the Forum’s workplace culture, which was triggered by accusations of discrimination and misconduct by Schwab. The Forum contends the investigation did not substantiate any malfeasance, but that it did surface issues within leadership. Schwab is set to leave the organization by January 2027.

Plaid valuation cut in half: The financial data fintech announced $575 million in funding led by Franklin Templeton, BlackRock and Fidelity, among others, in its latest round, valuing Plaid at $6.1 billion, less than half of the more than $13 billion it was worth when it last raised funds in 2021 – which came at a time when fintech startups were promising rapid growth and saw a boom in investments. Read more in this announcement from Jason Pate, chief strategy officer at Plaid, on LinkedIn.

State Street is one of the newest additions to LinkedIn’s Top Companies list due to its educational diversity – meaning the variety of staff with different educational and skill backgrounds – as well as demand for its workers by recruiters at other major companies. State Street’s human resources chief Kathy Horgan says that its focus is on targeting early-career candidates and giving them the tools to develop their careers at the company long-term.

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