For hundreds of unemployed Wall Street professionals, the “stress test” began at 8 a.m.

“They are hiring,” said John Willis, 46, who lost his job in October as a vice president of credit at CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender. “No one else is hiring.”

About 500 people attended the event featuring 13 federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FBI and the CIA. That was about 100 more people than the 400 expected, according to Alvin Kressler, executive director of the New York Society of Security Analysts, which sponsored the fair at its headquarters.

“Not everybody who is here is actually out of work right now,” Kressler said. “I think there are some folks who are very concerned about the next shoe to drop at their current company. What are my options?”

The expo was held on the day when the Federal Reserve released the methodology of the government’s stress tests for the 19 largest banks, where some in line had worked. Skip Stern, 48, was one of them.

He lost his job in high net-worth lending at Wachovia Corp. in October. Stern, the father of a 16-year-old daughter and a son, 18, in college, said he wants to work for the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department.

“I view it as anything is better than unemployment at this point,” Stern said when asked about taking a lower-paying government job. “It’s a, ‘What-are-you-comparing-it-to?’ kind of metric.”

Government salaries

A government employee in New York can earn between US$76,000 and $153,000, according to the US Office of Personnel Management’s website. In Washington, government salaries range from $59,000 to $127,000.

Many of those who turned out for the job fair are among 23,300 who lost financial-industry positions in New York as banks worldwide announced almost $870 billion in losses and writedowns.

Among the job-seekers was Tarek Elalaily, 31, who said he’s been out of work since early December when he lost his job as a credit associate at Ellington Management. Elalaily said he has spent the last four months reading and traveling, with stops in Egypt, Mexico and Europe.

“I’ve been handling it well,” said Elalaily, who lives in Stamford, Connecticut, about 35 miles north of the city, and said he has been receiving unemployment benefits. “It made me realize maybe how much I had been overspending before,” he said. “It’s surprising how many things you can cut out, like cable, phone costs.”

Staying put

Several attendees said while they were willing to take a government job in New York, they didn’t want to move to Washington.

Leone Young, 48, a former environmental services analyst at Citigroup Inc., said she’s been out of work since late last year when the bank eliminated her job as a research analyst. Young lives in New York and wants to stay put.

“I’m taking care of things I put off for 25 years,” Young said. “It’s daunting. Everybody is being laid off.”

The longest lines were for the SEC, the Federal Reserve of New York and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The SEC representatives gave free calculators to those in its line, while the Office of the Comptroller of Currency handed out stress-balls shaped like the Capitol’s dome in Washington.

FBI, CIA

Some people waited in line for the FBI and the CIA.

Pete Kilpatrick, an FBI recruiter, said the agency has about 2,500 openings nationwide.

“People wonder why we are here,” Kilpatrick, 28, said. “We are investigating guys like Bernie Madoff, cases involving securities fraud, banking fraud, mortgage fraud.”

Many of the unemployed attendees said Wall Street will never be the same. Elalaily said a couple of years ago he used to joke with a friend who worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“I wonder if there will be any money left for us when it’s time for us to get paid?” Elalaily said he would ask. “I think the answer now may be, no.”

Source: Bloomberg