Average Compensation For Employees in Investment Banks

Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns reported record profits. They are paying their employees unbelievably high salary and bonuses. I am not talking about the top managers and bankers here, but the data below are for average employees!

Lehman said it would pay its employees an average of $335,441 this year -- paying 25,936 workers a total of $7.7 billion in salary, bonuses and other benefits. At Bear Stearns, staff would receive an average of $321,740 in compensation. At Goldman Sachs? It is paying out $16.5 billion for compensations for its 26,000 strong workforce, or on average $622,000 per employee.

No wonder that Americans don't want to be engineers or scientists! More from Boston Globe:

That kind of compensation is more than three times the average salary of a Massachusetts surgeon; four times that of a Massachusetts chief executive; and nearly 12 times that of a Massachusetts high school teacher, according to the state's Department of Workforce Development.

Wall Street is benefiting from record corporate profits, which have left companies flush with cash, Behravesh said. That, in turn, has fueled a wave of mergers and acquisitions, from which Goldman and similar firms profit by putting together the financing.

Certainly, it's not a secret Wall Street can pay well. And not every Goldman employee will make $622,000, since the average is skewed by top traders and investment bankers who can make millions.

... ...

Still, these outsized earnings renewed concerns about the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States, and whether the benefits of the economic expansion are getting distributed equitably. The payday also renewed questions about the value society places on different kinds of work.