Wall Street Sulks As Bonuses Retreat

The average Wall Street bonus for a securities firm employee dropped 26% last year, to $176,700, setting workers back to levels they haven’t seen since before the pandemic, according to New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Janet H. Cho reported for Barron’s Daily.

Photo Insert: Wall Street’s $33.7 billion bonus pool for 2022 was 21% lower than the previous year’s record $42.7 billion.

Wall Street’s $33.7 billion bonus pool for 2022 was 21% lower than the previous year’s record $42.7 billion, representing the biggest drop since 2008. Wall Street’s pretax profits fell 56% last year compared with a boom year for deal-making in 2021.

The 2022 numbers break the best two-year streak in about a decade, with the bonus pool and the average bonus both up in 2020 and 2021.

Workers now can note that after a 43% drop in the average bonus in 2008, the number jumped 39% the next year. Smaller bonuses mean less income tax revenue for the city and state.

DiNapoli estimated that one in 11 jobs in the city is either directly or indirectly associated with the securities industry. The industry accounted for 22% of the state’s tax collections in the fiscal year 2021-22, and 8% of total tax collections for fiscal year 2022, DiNapoli’s office estimated.

The securities sector in 2022 employed about 190,800 people, the highest level in more than two decades.

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