Wall Street Bonuses Still Double NYC's Annual Salary Despite Drop

NEW YORK — A typical New Yorker would have to work about two years just to earn Wall Street's typical bonus from last year, a new report says. The average bonus in New York City's securities industry dropped nearly 17 percent to $153,700 in 2018, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office said Tuesday.

That's still roughly twice the $77,100 average salary for the rest of the city's private sector in 2017 despite the year-over-year decrease, according to the comptroller's office.

The average securities salary was more than five times that figure at $422,500 including bonuses in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the comptroller's office says. Nearly a quarter of securities employees earned more than $250,000, the office says — but less than 3 percent of the rest of the city's workforce can say the same.

"Despite a sharp decline in the financial markets in the fourth quarter of 2018, the securities industry still had a good year with increased profits and employment," DiNapoli said in a statement.

The comptroller's annual bonus estimate, based on personal income tax trends, includes cash bonuses for the current year along with deferred bonuses from past years that have been cashed in, the office says.

The average securities worker took home a smaller bonus last year because a larger number of employees shared the $27.5 billion bonus pool amid higher profits, the comptroller's office says.

The securities industry reaped its biggest profits since 2010 last year with a grand total of $27.3 billion, up from $24.5 billion in 2017, the comptroller's office found.

The industry also added 4,700 jobs in 2018 for a total of 181,300, making for a workforce that's still 4 percent smaller than before the financial crisis in 2007, the office says.

The growth came despite the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting its worst December in nearly 90 years, the comptroller's office says. Last year was a volatile one for the market — the Dow's rough December followed a record high in October, according to news reports.

"It’s too soon to say how the industry will fare in 2019, but trade tensions, a slowing global economy and greater economic uncertainty are all factors that could affect results," DiNapoli said.