Wall Street Bonuses and Profitability Heading Lower, Maybe Far Lower

Banking, finance, and taxes

Published: March 7, 2016 12:05 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 12:17 pm

Working on Wall Street used to be the biggest dream job in the world. The movie “Wall Street,” unexpectedly to its producer, glorified the creed of “greed is good,” and following the money paid off for a generation. But something changed during and after the Great Recession. Now Wall Street is targeted for success and targeted for greed. So what happens when Wall Street is less and less profitable?

A new report from the State Comptroller’s Office of New York showed that both bonuses and profits on Wall Street declined in 2015. Wages supposedly were increasing around the nation in late 2015 and 2016. That should make it stand out that Wall Street profits and bonuses are down so much.

The comptroller report indicates that the average bonus paid in New York City’s security industry was down a sharp 9% in 2015, to $146,200. The industrywide profits were down even worse, at -10.5%.

It turns out that pretax broker/dealer operations profits for New York Stock Exchange member firms were down by nearly $1.7 billion to $14.3 billion in 2015. Things started out fine in 2015, but a small loss of $177 million in the fourth quarter seems to be pointed out — a period in which markets were recovering but unable to reach new highs. That was said to be the first quarterly loss industrywide since 2011.