Financial News

Average Wall Street pay hits post-recession high of $422K

Ten years after the financial crisis that led America into the deepest recession in 80 years, Wall Street jobs are doing just fine, according to a top New York state official.

The average 2017 salary in New York's securities industry reached its highest level since 2008, said New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That figure reached $422,500 last year, including bonuses, DiNapoli said. Excluding bonuses, it was $403,100. Both marks are the highest since 2008. 

"Wall Street has profited every year since the end of the recession in 2009, and compensation last year reached its highest point since the financial crisis," DiNapoli said in a press release. 

The top pay in the state isn't found on Wall Street, however. That honor goes to hedge-fund-heavy Suffolk County, which takes up the eastern half of Long Island and where the average securities job has a salary of just under $600,000. That's an income enjoyed by fewer than 1 in 100 American households, according to IRS data.

But for all the money Wall Street rakes in, its headcount has actually been shrinking since the 1990s. During the dot-com boom, New York City had more than 216,000 securities workers. That number fell to 180,000, expanded and contracted again during the financial crisis. Now just under 200,000 securities workers are in New York today, spread out among 120 firms (down from 200 before the crisis).

They make up less than 5 percent of city's private-sector workers, but according to the comptroller's office, they account for 21 percent of all wages and 18 percent of city tax collections.

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