By Juli Morris on August 21, 2009 in Business/Finance.

We reported last month that Hiring Demand at the ten major financial institutions repaying TARP funds declined 11 percent in June from its May level. The overall trend for Q2 2009, however, has been strong growth, with online job ads for these firms up 60 percent in July over their Q1 low in February. July's 18 percent month-over-month gain puts Hiring Demand at the nation's largest financial firms solidly above its three-year, pre-Recession high in September 2007.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Online job ads posted by J.P. Morgan Chase now constitute 67 percent of the total number of new ads in July (up 7 percent from June), with the largest concentration of job ads falling under the following categories: Tellers; Sales Agents, Financial Services; Financial Managers, Branch or Department; Personal Financial Advisers; Loan Officers; and Computer Specialists.

The top five hiring markets for these firms (by MSA) are New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Dallas-Fort Worth.

While positive earnings news and announcements of hiring plans continue to roll in, the sector still faces serious challenges:

The specter of a systemic collapse in the U.S. banking system has faded, largely because the government has shored up the industry with $250 billion in taxpayer-funded capital since last fall, most of it going to big banks. But more than 20% of all banks reported a net loss in the first quarter, the latest period for which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has figures, and problems are now building in small and medium institutions. Mortgage-delinquency rates and losses on credit cards are at all-time highs. The accumulating bad assets and need for capital mean few banks are lending aggressively, creating a drag on the economic recovery.

The ten financial firms granted permission by the Treasury in early June to begin repaying government-bailout funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program are: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T Corp., American Express Co., Capital One Financial Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., State Street Corp. and Northern Trust Corp.