The average Wall Street bonus is now 4 times a U.S. worker’s salary

Wall Street saw record bonuses in 2024 amid a swell in dealmaking and a surging stock market, with the average payout of $244,700 amounting to roughly four times a U.S. worker’s salary last year.

The bonus pool grew to $47.5 billion last year, leading to a spike of more than 30 % in the average banker’s bonus, according to data released Wednesday by the New York Comptroller’s Office.

In contrast, the median full-time U.S. worker’s weekly earnings didn’t quite crest $1,200 at the end of 2024, amounting to about $62,000 annually, according to January data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The yawning gap reflects a broadening disparity between the haves and have-nots, felt across the globe and quite acutely in the U.S.

The top 10% of American households collectively claim more than 67% of all household wealth, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Meanwhile, a January survey from the Pew Research Center of adults in 36 different nations, including the U.S., found that 84% felt the gap between the rich and poor was a “very big” or “moderately big” problem in their country. A median of 57% of adults predicted children in their country will be worse off financially than their parents when they grow up.

Wall Street’s “very strong performance” in 2024 fueled the record bonus pool, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Wednesday in a news release.

DiNapoli noted that profits on Wall Street exploded 90% as the ongoing economic rebound propelled dealmaking and boosted investment banking fees and issuance of corporate debt.

The reports on bonuses come as financial giants such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have begun thinning their ranks in recent weeks, as Wall Street undergoes its annual cull of low performers against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s more volatile economic policy.

One in 11 jobs in New York City is indirectly or directly tied to Wall Street, DiNapoli estimated, with the total number of employees reaching 201,500 in 2024, its highest level in at least three decades.

Wall Street’s 2024 bonuses will generate an additional $600 million in state income tax revenue and $275 million in city tax revenue compared to the year before, according to DiNapoli. Wall Street accounted for nearly a fifth of the state’s overall tax collections in the fiscal year 2023-24.