A major U.S. bank, with over $2.6 billion in assets, just raised its minimum wage.
Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it would raise its minimum pay for its full- and part-time U.S. hourly workers to $25 an hour. The change will take effect next month, pushing the minimum salary for full-time U.S. employees to over $50,000 annually.
This pay increase is the final phase of a plan announced in 2017 to boost the bank’s base pay from $15 an hour to $25 an hour by 2025. (Employees have been making $24 an hour since October 2024.) With the raise to $25 an hour, the starting salary for full-time U.S. workers will have increased by more than $20,000 since 2017.
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“[The raise] gives a teammate a chance to join our company, spend their whole career here, and support their families,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Bloomberg.
Moynihan emphasized that the higher minimum wage minimized turnover, causing the rate of departing employees to drop from 20% in 2017 to around 10% this year. Customer attrition, or a loss of customers, has also dropped, he stated.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As Bank of America adopts new technologies like AI, it has reduced its number of employees across some departments, Moynihan told Bloomberg. The goal is to put more dollars in the pockets of the employees who remain and “re-skilling them,” he said.
Bank of America had about 213,000 employees as of July, according to its newsroom.
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