Wall Street bonuses, jobs lose certainty

By Tim McLaughlin

NEW YORK, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Wall Street's four-year jobs expansion boom could end in painful retrenchment as early as December and bonuses for some could take a hit, too.

The jobs ax may cut swiftly and deeply, experts said, as turmoil in the credit market and mortgage industry spreads to other corners of the U.S. economy.

"It would not be surprising, should the market continue to correct, that come December people will be surprised by the paucity of their bonuses next year," said Harlan Platt, a business professor at Northeast University who has written books about corporate meltdowns. "And a goodly number may find themselves looking for work elsewhere."

That would be a turnabout from a hiring binge that looked healthy as recently as two months ago, before the subprime mortgage crisis began to roil larger brokerages and hedge funds and shaky credit markets stalled big corporate takeovers.

Johnson Associates said aggressive U.S. hiring will be hard to maintain. But it said strong growth in the first half of 2007 should lift bonus payouts over the record set in 2006.

Employment in the U.S. securities industry reached 848,300 jobs in June, a full recovery of the jobs lost between the March 2001 peak of 840,900 and the October 2003 bottom of 751,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since the end of 2001, the combined employment at Bear Stearns BSC.N, Lehman Brothers LEH.N, Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Merrill Lynch (MER.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has risen 28 percent to nearly 192,000 people worldwide, according to their financial statements.