Byline: Julia Renner, labor and business reporter covering regional banks and workplace data for 12 years
Last reviewed: June 28, 2026
FirstMerchants is best understood as First Merchants Corporation and First Merchants Bank, a regional-bank employer whose 2025 Form 10-K reported 2,086 full-time equivalent employees. The same filing reported 18 percent turnover, 65 percent “highly engaged” employees, and 99.7 percent required-training completion, while BLS May 2024 data put teller median pay at $39,340 and loan officer median pay at $74,180.
Those figures make FirstMerchants a cleaner workforce story than a simple salary story. The company shows formal employee systems, but the public data still points to a split between lower-ceiling branch work and higher-value banking roles.
What FirstMerchants is as a workplace
First Merchants Corporation is the public holding company behind First Merchants Bank. The company’s investor materials and SEC filings place it in the regional-banking market, with operations centered in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. Its SEC filings page lists current public-company documents, including annual reports and proxy filings.
That structure matters for workers. FirstMerchants is not a single job category. It employs branch service workers, banking-center managers, commercial bankers, loan officers, credit analysts, treasury staff, wealth professionals, operations teams, compliance workers, technology employees, and corporate support staff.
One name. Many jobs.
A workforce article has to keep those jobs apart. A teller-style role should be compared with BLS teller data. A lending role should be compared with loan officer data. A credit analyst role should be compared with professional banking and credit data. The company’s headcount figure includes all of those lanes.
The headcount number: 2,086 full-time equivalent employees
The First Merchants Corporation 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K reported 2,086 full-time equivalent employees as of December 31, 2025.
That number puts FirstMerchants in a mid-sized employer category for banking. It is not a small community bank with a handful of branches, and it is not a national bank with hundreds of thousands of employees. It is large enough to have formal training, benefits administration, human-capital metrics, succession planning, and executive-compensation disclosures.
The headcount number also matters because acquisitions can change the workforce base. First Merchants has used acquisitions as part of its growth strategy, and workforce totals can move when banking centers and operating teams are added. A reader comparing year-to-year employment should treat deal timing and reporting dates carefully.
This is the first analytical point: FirstMerchants’ workforce scale supports real internal systems, but it also means role experience will vary sharply by department and market. A branch employee in Ohio may not experience the company the same way as a credit analyst, treasury employee, or headquarters-based risk worker.
Turnover: the 18 percent signal
The 2025 Form 10-K reported First Merchants’ overall turnover rate at 18 percent in 2025.
That is one of the more useful employee figures because it cuts through brand language. A bank can have strong engagement programs and still face churn in branch, service, and support roles. Customer-facing banking jobs often compete with credit unions, larger banks, insurance offices, call centers, retail management, and local administrative employers.
The 18 percent figure does not say which roles turned over. It does not separate voluntary turnover from involuntary turnover in the snippet available. It does not tell whether turnover was higher in branch service than in lending, operations, or corporate roles. That limit matters.
Even with those limits, the number is not neutral. It indicates that FirstMerchants must keep hiring, training, replacing, and moving people internally. A company with low turnover can rely more heavily on experienced staff staying put. A company with 18 percent turnover needs a stronger pipeline.
The interpretation is practical: turnover is part of the FirstMerchants employment picture, not a footnote.
Engagement: 65 percent highly engaged, 85 percent response rate
First Merchants’ 2025 Form 10-K reported that 65 percent of employees were considered “highly engaged” in its biennial Employee Engagement Survey, with an 85 percent response rate.
Those numbers are useful because response rate changes the credibility of an engagement figure. An 85 percent response rate means the survey reached a large share of the workforce. The 65 percent “highly engaged” result suggests a majority positive reading, but not a universal one.
The wording also deserves care. “Highly engaged” is the company’s survey category, not a government labor statistic. It cannot be compared cleanly to BLS wage data or to another bank unless the survey method and thresholds match.
This is where a lot of workplace coverage gets soft. Engagement is real data, but it is company-defined data. It should be reported as a signal of internal sentiment, not as proof that every branch, department, or manager performs well.
Training and talent systems
The 2025 Form 10-K reported 99.7 percent completion of required training and said more than 1,500 employees participated in the annual calibration process, a 9-box talent assessment used for succession and career planning. It also said more than 55 employees participated in education assistance in 2025.
That combination is more concrete than a generic “career growth” claim. Required training completion shows compliance discipline. The 9-box calibration process shows formal talent review. Education assistance participation shows a measurable benefit, although the number is modest against 2,086 full-time equivalent employees.
Do not overread it.
A 9-box process can identify succession candidates, performance levels, and development plans. It does not guarantee promotion. Education assistance can help some employees, but the filing’s “more than 55” participants means public evidence supports use by a small share of the workforce in 2025.
The stronger conclusion is that FirstMerchants has structured workforce systems. The weaker conclusion, and the one to avoid, is that every employee sees fast advancement.
Pay benchmarks: branch work versus lending work
BLS data shows why FirstMerchants workforce analysis has to be role-specific. BLS May 2024 data reported a $39,340 median annual wage for tellers, with the lowest 10 percent below $31,270 and the highest 10 percent above $48,270. BLS May 2024 data reported a $74,180 median annual wage for loan officers. BLS May 2024 data reported a $48,650 median annual wage for financial clerks and projected 5 percent employment decline from 2024 to 2034.
The teller-to-loan-officer gap is $34,840 at the median. That spread is too large to ignore. It means a FirstMerchants employee in a transaction-heavy branch role is likely in a very different labor market from an employee in lending, credit, or commercial banking.
Glassdoor’s 2026 First Merchants salary data lines up with that pattern. Glassdoor reported annual salaries ranging from $39,108 for a Service Associate to $174,116 for a Vice President, based on 452 submitted salaries. It also reported First Merchants job-page figures of $39,108 for Service Associate, $50,412 for Personal Banker, and $66,797 for Credit Analyst.
The public record points to a ladder, not a flat pay culture. Service work sits near the teller benchmark. Personal banking moves up. Credit and lending move higher. Management and vice president roles widen the range.
| Workforce lane | Public source | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| FirstMerchants workforce | 2025 Form 10-K | 2,086 FTE employees |
| FirstMerchants turnover | 2025 Form 10-K | 18 percent |
| Teller benchmark | BLS May 2024 | $39,340 median annual wage |
| Financial clerk benchmark | BLS May 2024 | $48,650 median annual wage |
| Loan officer benchmark | BLS May 2024 | $74,180 median annual wage |
| Service Associate estimate | Glassdoor 2026 | $39,108 |
| Credit Analyst estimate | Glassdoor 2026 jobs page | $66,797 |
Where the proxy pay number fits
The First Merchants Corporation 2026 Proxy Statement reported CEO Mark K. Hardwick’s 2025 total compensation at $2,398,488, median employee total compensation at $62,811, and a CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio of 38 to 1.
That number belongs in workforce analysis, but it should not be treated as an ordinary salary estimate. The proxy median is calculated under SEC pay-ratio rules across a mixed employee population. It is not a teller wage, a personal banker wage, or a credit analyst wage.
Compare it carefully. The $62,811 proxy median is above the BLS teller median of $39,340 and the BLS financial clerk median of $48,650, but below the BLS loan officer median of $74,180. It sits between branch-administrative and lending benchmarks, which makes sense for a mixed workforce.
This is the second analytical point: the proxy median is useful as a company-wide compensation marker, not as a role-level pay promise. Articles that use it as “what FirstMerchants workers earn” blur the very thing readers need clarified.
Benefits and retirement data
The strongest public retirement figure comes from First Merchants’ Retirement Income and Savings Plan filing. It describes an employer match up to 4.5 percent of eligible compensation, structured as 100 percent of the first 3 percent of employee contributions plus 50 percent of contributions above 3 percent and below 6 percent.
That formula has different dollar values at different pay levels. At the BLS teller median of $39,340, a 4.5 percent match would equal about $1,770 if an eligible employee contributed enough to receive the full match. At the BLS loan officer median of $74,180, it would equal about $3,338.
The benefit is percentage-based. Higher pay turns the same formula into a larger dollar amount.
First Merchants’ public benefits materials also list health insurance, prescription drug insurance, dental, vision, wellness, HSA, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability coverage, PTO, holidays, bereavement, educational assistance, and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Public pages reviewed do not show medical premiums, deductibles, PTO accrual tiers, ESPP terms, or eligibility waiting periods.
The role outlook is uneven
BLS projected teller employment to decline 13 percent from 2024 to 2034. BLS projected financial clerk employment to decline 5 percent over the same period, while still expecting about 102,200 openings per year from replacement needs. BLS projected loan officer employment to grow 2 percent from 2024 to 2034.
That is the clearest labor-market split around FirstMerchants work. Routine transaction and clerical roles face pressure. Lending and relationship-oriented roles have a stronger outlook, even if loan officer growth is still slower than the all-occupation average.
For a regional bank, this creates a workforce tension. Branches remain central to local banking relationships, but branch jobs are not all equally durable or equally paid. The higher-value internal paths are more likely to run through relationship banking, credit, lending, treasury, wealth, risk, technology, compliance, and management.
Where the headline workforce story misleads
A soft employer profile would say FirstMerchants has jobs, benefits, and career development. The public data gives a more specific picture.
The company has 2,086 full-time equivalent employees. It reported 18 percent turnover. It reported 65 percent highly engaged employees and an 85 percent survey response rate. It reported 99.7 percent required-training completion. It reported more than 1,500 employees in a formal calibration process and more than 55 employees using education assistance. Those are measurable facts from the 2025 Form 10-K.
The analysis is more mixed than a careers page. FirstMerchants appears to have real internal systems, but the economic payoff depends heavily on moving out of lower-ceiling roles. The data does not support treating all FirstMerchants jobs as one employment deal.
Data limits
BLS reports occupation-level national data, not FirstMerchants payroll. Glassdoor data is self-reported and can shift as submissions change. SEC filings are official for company-level figures, but they do not break out turnover, pay, or engagement by branch, department, state, manager, or job family. Public benefits pages name categories but do not price employee costs.
Data reflects 2024 BLS wage and outlook data, 2025 First Merchants SEC reporting, and 2026 public salary pages. Acquisition activity, local market hiring, interest rates, and internal pay adjustments can change the picture.
FAQ
How many employees does FirstMerchants have?
The First Merchants Corporation 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K reported 2,086 full-time equivalent employees as of December 31, 2025.
What is FirstMerchants turnover?
The 2025 Form 10-K reported an overall turnover rate of 18 percent in 2025. The filing excerpt does not break that turnover out by role or department.
What does BLS say comparable bank jobs pay?
BLS May 2024 data reported $39,340 median annual pay for tellers, $48,650 for financial clerks, and $74,180 for loan officers.
What does Glassdoor report for First Merchants pay?
Glassdoor’s 2026 First Merchants salary page reported annual salaries ranging from $39,108 for a Service Associate to $174,116 for a Vice President, based on 452 submitted salaries.
What is the First Merchants CEO pay ratio?
The 2026 Proxy Statement reported CEO total compensation of $2,398,488, median employee total compensation of $62,811, and a CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio of 38 to 1.
Does FirstMerchants have formal employee development?
The 2025 Form 10-K reported more than 1,500 employees in the annual calibration process, 99.7 percent required-training completion, and more than 55 employees participating in education assistance in 2025.
What is the strongest workforce takeaway?
FirstMerchants looks like a structured regional-bank employer with formal training and talent systems, but the data shows a clear role split. Service and clerical work sit near lower BLS benchmarks, while lending, credit, treasury, wealth, risk, technology, and management carry stronger wage and outlook signals.