Wall Street bonuses now third highest on record after 15% jump in 2013The average bonus paid to securities industry employees in New York City grew 15% last year to more than $164,000 The $26.7bn in bonuses Wall Street banks handed out in 2013 would be enough to more than double the pay for all 1,085,000 full-time US minimum wage workers.
The average bonus paid to securities industry employees in New York City grew 15% last year to more than $164,000, the largest average Wall Street bonus since the 2008 financial crisis and the third highest on record, New York’s state comptroller reported Wednesday.
The securities industry has been profitable for five consecutive years, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. It had 165,200 workers in New York City as of December, or 12.6% fewer than before the crisis.
Profits for broker/dealer operations of some 200 New York Stock Exchange members – the traditional measure of profitability for the securities industry – totaled nearly $16.7bn last year, down 30% from a year earlier.
"Although profits were lower than the prior year, the industry still had a good year in 2013 despite costly legal settlements and higher interest rates,” DiNapoli said. "Wall Street continues to demonstrate resilience as it evolves in a changing regulatory environment.”
Regulatory changes have required larger reserves, limited proprietary trading and imposed other changes intended to reduce risk. Firms now defer a larger share of bonuses, and the comptroller’s report for 2013 includes money deferred from prior years.
The report showed the bonus pool for the city’s securities employees grew 15% last year to $26.7bn during the traditional December-March bonus season, with the pool increased by 44% over the past two years driven by deferred compensation.
The average salary including bonuses in 2012 was $360,700, or more than five times greater than the rest of the rest of the private sector. The industry accounted for 22% of all private sector city wages in 2012 and 5% of the jobs, the report said. The securities industry generated an estimated $3.8bn in city taxes in fiscal year 2013 and $10.3bn in state taxes in the state’s last fiscal year.
The $26.7bn in bonuses Wall Street banks handed out in 2013 would be enough to more than double the pay for all 1,085,000 full-time U.S. minimum wage workers, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of New York State Comptroller bonus figures released this morning.
The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based think tank that calls itself "a policy and research resource for visionary social justice movements,” said the $26.7bn would be enough to more than double the pay for more than 1 million Americans who work full time at the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
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