Fidelity just announced a massive hiring spree, targeting more than 12,000 new staffers as the investment giant bets on the power of retail investors

• Fidelity Investments said Thursday it would add more than 12,000 new employees by September.
• The new hires will bring Fidelity's headcount to 68,000 by year's end, up 19% from the start of this year.

Fidelity Investments said Thursday it will hire more than 12,000 new employees by the end of the third quarter, gambling that individual investors will continue to grow beyond the Reddit-fueled Covid-19 lockdown boom.

Most will be concentrated in client-facing positions, with 69% of the new employees falling under that category while 14% are targeted for technology-focused positions.

The new target of more than 12,000 new hires comes after 16,600 were added in 2021 and 7,200 in 2020. The 2022 batch of new employees will bring Fidelity's headcount to 68,000 by year's end, up 19% from the start of this year.

Fidelity's announcement comes amid worried that recent market volatility will last longer than the growth of individual investors.

It also contrasts starkly from those of competitors like Robinhood. Late Tuesday, CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev said in a blog post the trading app would let go of approximately 9% of its full-time employees, or more than 300 workers.

Robinhood went public last July as one of the biggest initial public offerings in 2021, becoming an immediate Wall Street darling as individual investors flocked to the trading platform.

On Tuesday, Tenev said Robinhood had created duplicate jobs after staffing shot up to around 3,800 in 2021 from 700 in 2020, describing a period of "hyper-growth" accelerated by COVID lockdowns, low-interest rates, and economic stimulus checks sent to millions of Americans by the federal government.

But lockdowns are gone, interest rates are heading back up, and stimulus checks have run out. The effects are expected to show up in Robinhood's first-quarter earnings due after the market close on Thursday.

In the fourth quarter, Robinhood saw a 32% year-over-year revenue decline to $355 million, and monthly active users fell 8% sequentially to 17.3 million.

Meanwhile, Fidelity saw revenue rise 15% in 2021 to $24 billion, as assets undermanagement grew 20% to $11.8 trillion.