Salaries and promotion opportunities in the English banking industry, 1890-1936

This article re-examines the recent claim that the economic position of bank clerks was stable or improving during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using rich data from Williams Deacon's Bank, Manchester and Liverpool District Bank, and Sheffield and Rotherham Bank, it is shown that real salaries were declining between the 1890s and World War I. For some groups of clerks, this decline was considerable. In addition, promotion to higher levels, such as branch manager, was becoming more difficult and the returns to promotion were declining. The economic position of banking staff only recovered in the 1920s and 1930s.