What do Jerome Powell and Henry Ford have in common? A recognition that labor has always been a transient force — shaped by machines, markets and management. Wall Street, for all its illusions of permanence, is no exception. With AI entering the halls of corporate banks, junior bankers are left to wonder: Are they the newest expendable cogs in finance’s vast machine?

Junior bankers today feel as if they’re being marched off a labor cliff by artificial intelligence — machines that don’t take PTO in the middle of a deal and never miss a 2 am deadline. The fear is palpable: Fewer pitch books to grind through, fewer hours to tweak models and the looming specter of irrelevance.

The panic over AI gutting junior bankers is as old as labor itself. Just as the steam engine freed workers from drud

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