A new report finds that bonuses for Wall Street employees skyrocketed in 2021 to the highest levels since the Great Recession, while worker pay has remained stagnant.
In an analysis of New York State Comptroller data, the Institute for Policy Studies found that the average bonus for Wall Street employees rose to $257,500 in 2021 – or roughly five times the average salary for U.S. workers. This is an increase of 20 percent from 2020; meanwhile, the average American only saw wage raises of 2 percent in 2021, which is far less than the inflation rate of 7 percent.
These bonuses represent a huge increase over previous decades; the average bonus for Wall Street employees has increased by a whopping 1,743 percent since 1985, when the average bonus was $13,970. If minimum wage had kept up with Wall Street bonuses, it would be $61.75 an hour, or 8.5 times higher than the current minimum wage of $7.25.
“Millions of low-wage essential workers are struggling to make ends meet while taking care of our country’s basic human needs. Meanwhile, Wall Streeters are getting massively rewarded for high-risk behaviors that endanger the entire economy,” report author Sarah Anderson told Truthout. “Fourteen years after the financial crash, we still have no meaningful controls on the reckless Wall Street bonus culture.”
Anderson also noted that although the Dodd-Frank Act called for measures to reform Wall Street, like restrictions on Wall Street bonuses, regulators have failed to enact such...
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