Wall Street Bonuses Reach Pre-Crisis Levels

According to estimates by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the average bonus paid to securities industry employees in New York City went up 17 percent last year to $184,200. That's a level not seen since before the financial crisis. It's also more than triple the national median household income which was $59,039 in 2016. The average bonus last year wasn't far off the record $191,360 from 2006, right before the financial crisis struck.

In total, the 2017 bonus pool came to $31.4 billion, up from $26.9 billion in 2016. The report said that bonuses were likely boosted last year from tax law changes that remove the corporate deduction for performance-based pay from the beginning of 2018. That resulted in many firms moving their payments up to December of last year. Pretax profits from broker-dealer operations of the NYSE also increased 42 percent to $24.5 billion, the highest level since 2010.