The city's Independent Budget Office says that Wall Street pay has gone down a considerable amount. According to the Post, "The IBO reported that securities-industry wages averaged $311,279 in 2009, down 21.5 percent from $396,370 the previous year, and down 24.6 percent from $412,915 in 2007." Oh, so they're still making bank? Pffft.

IBO senior economist David Belkin wrote on his blog:

How could wages nose-dive in 2009 while Wall Street profits skyrocketed? First, most of last year’s wage decline reflected the industry’s crack-up in 2008: New York Stock Exchange member firms posting record losses, revenues dropping almost in half, and the year-end bonus pool shrinking in tandem—those bonus reductions were almost entirely felt in the first quarter of 2009. Real average bonus payments for the year as a whole fell 38.2 percent in 2009, on top of a 6.6 percent drop in 2008. It should be noted that bonuses measured here do not count grants of stock options; rather, reported wages include the gains realized on previously awarded options when they are exercised. But many options were “underwater” in 2009 due to the steep slide in the stock market, and this also depressed wages.

At the same time, while Wall Street profits surged in 2009, firm revenues did not recover. One result was continued pressure on employment—the securities industry lost 18,400 jobs in New York City in 2009, more than twice the decline over the course of 2008—and this appears to have weighed down baseline salary growth. The negative effects on options and salaries combined to reduce real average non-bonus wages in the city’s securities sector by 7.4 percent in 2009.


While you wonder why there's this worry about Wall Street wages when many others making much less are out of jobs, the city estimates that the reduced pay means $12 billion less in sales and income taxes between 2008 and 2011. And earlier this year State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said the average Wall Street salary was $340,000; his office told the Post his numbers were different because the IBO adjusted for inflation and used data not available at the time of his study.