Bank of America raises minimum wage to $24

Bank of America has announced it will be raising minimum wage for thousands of employees across its network, as part of its plan to reach $25 minimum wage by 2025. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING

WILMINGTON —  Bank of America will be raising its hourly minimum wage to $24 per hour, impacting thousands of its employees in Delaware and thousands more across America.

The wage increase is set for October, bringing the second largest bank in the nation one step closer to its long established goal of a $25 minimum wage by 2025. The $1 an hour raise will apply to all full-and part-time hourly jobs in the United States, bringing the annual salary to roughly $50,000.

Bank of America is one of Delaware’s major employers, with roughly 6,000 employees in the First State, spread out from branches as well as its offices in downtown Wilmington, Christiana and Newark. It’s unclear how many Delaware employees will see their salaries rise, but Bank of America representatives have said it affects “thousands” of its 212,000 total employees.

The wage hike is Bank of America’s seventh since 2017. In the past seven years, minimum pay at the financial giant has risen 66% from $15 an hour.

“What we have found is paying a competitive wage and offering great benefits attracts the best people, and when you have the best people, you can do your best work for our customers, our clients and our communities,” Bank of America Chief Human Resources Officer Sheri Bronstein said in video statement on the announcement. “But we are not just focused on attracting talent. We want to be an all around great place to work. So we really focus on how we can help our teammates grow their careers.”

Bank of America’s announcement comes at a time when banking companies and financial firms are grappling with how to attract and retain staff, particularly tellers at bank branches. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 27,000 tellers will need to be hired each year until 2033.

The Delaware Department of Labor reports that there are 900 bank tellers in the state, as of last year. The average starting wage for those tellers was $17.27 per hour.

Over the last five years, major banking companies that rank among Delaware’s top employers have raised their minimum wages and many other employers have been working to address tightening household budgets with rising inflation.

JPMorgan Chase has set starting wages range between $20 and $25 depending on the market. In 2022, British banking giant Barclays, which has its U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, moved its minimum wage from $17 an hour to at least $20.50.

Delaware’s minimum wage currently sits at  $13.25 per hour and is scheduled to hit $15 per hour next year. That is well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 which has not moved in decades.

Delaware currently averages 44,080 employees in the finance sector who earn an estimated hourly wage between $79.95 and $88.46 as of the first quarter of 2024. However, that covers all jobs in the finance industry here, which includes managers, market leaders and executives based here.