Wall Street workers leaving NYC for fresh start

Baird has seen roughly 50 percent more applications from Wall Street than they received last year, he said.

European and Asian banks are also seeing the abundance of workers as an opportunity to strengthen their position in the U.S. market.

"I'm noticing that people are willing to work places that they would have hung up on me if I had suggested it a year ago," Kraeger said of his headhunting work.

More bankers are willing to go to Asia than ever before because it is still viewed as an emerging market, said James Constable, owner of Albany Beck Consulting, an English headhunting firm that places financial workers in jobs from London to Singapore.

"Banks (in New York and London) are not looking to add to their work force in the short term," Constable said in an e-mail interview. "This means that the volume is down, so instead the banks are opting to hire one senior candidate rather than a number of more junior ones."

So far this month, Albany Beck has received 38 percent more resumes from Wall Street candidates willing to work overseas than they did in October of 2007, Constable said.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli expects 40,000 Wall Street jobs could be lost by the end of the year. So far he said 13,200 people have lost jobs in New York's financial sector since a year ago.

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While some boutiques and middle market firms were hit hard by the economic downturn, larger banks had bought much more of the toxic mortgage-backed assets at the heart of the meltdown.

While headhunting to link new securities jobs with Wall Street casualties is one of the few growth industries these days, it's not easy, said Robin Judson, managing director of Smiths Hanley Associates LLC, a New York City hiring firm.

The finance job market is flooded with highly qualified executives and bankers, but "there aren't enough jobs to go around," Judson said.

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