What job does Nick Carraway seek in New York City?

Nick Carraway seeks work as a bond salesman in New York City.

In The Great Gatsby, Nick moves east in the spring of 1922 after serving in World War I. He says he went to New York to learn the bond business, a field linked to the booming financial culture of the Jazz Age. He rents a modest house in West Egg, Long Island, beside Jay Gatsby’s mansion.

Nick’s job places him near Wall Street and helps explain his connection to the novel’s wealthy characters. He is not himself a millionaire or a reckless speculator; he works in the respectable, expanding securities business while observing the extravagance around him.

A common mix-up is confusing Nick’s occupation with Gatsby’s. Gatsby is a mysterious millionaire whose fortune is later associated with bootlegging, while Nick is an ordinary bond salesman and the story’s narrator. His profession also distinguishes him from the novel’s other New York figures, including Tom Buchanan and Meyer Wolfsheim.