New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli estimates that Wall Street’s average bonus in 2021 reached a record $ 257,500, up 20% from $ 213,700 the previous year.
Payments are clearly good news for employees in the securities industry, who make up 5% of New York City’s private sector employees. But their wages make up one-fifth of the city’s private sector wages, so high bonuses are also good news for Gotham’s tax funding.
Dinapoli estimated that as a result of the record high payments in 2021, the city would exceed its expected income from income tax.
Overall, Wall Street paid an estimated $ 45 billion during the December-March bonus season. This is an increase of $ 8 billion from last year’s total bonus pool.
Of course, how much income the average Wall Street employee earned in 2021 depended on the money the employer had set aside for total compensation. For example, Goldman Sachs said it secured $ 17.7 billion in total compensation costs last year, an increase of 33% from 2020. That’s about $ 404,000 on average for the company’s 43,900 workers, including wages and bonuses.
Dinapoli has brought record high bonuses to Wall Street’s surge in profits, but note that uneven economic recovery from pandemics and geopolitical turmoil could lower the 2022 bonus. Prompted.
“The recovery in other sectors remains sluggish and uneven, and the market is confused as Russia wages an unforgivable war against Ukraine’s freedom,” said Dinapoli. “In New York, we will not return to pre-Covid economic strength until more New Yorkers and more sectors (retail, tourism, construction, art, etc.) have similar successes.”
And even if these sectors recover, many American workers will not be able to approach earning six-digit bonuses, let alone six-digit income. According to a study by Oxfam America, nearly 52 million workers, or nearly one-third of the US workforce, earn less than $ 15 an hour. These workers, whose annual income is less than $ 31,200, are disproportionately female and colored.
–CNN’s Paul La Monica and Tami Luhby contributed to this report