I think the report is referring to employees of broker dealer units of SEC or other member firms. I’m not sure what category of employees are included. I don’t think the receptionist at Goldman Sachs is considered a “securities industry” employee for the purposes of their calculations.
The report also distinguishes between compensation in New York City and in some other areas. People outside New York City are not included in the $404,800 figure.
“the average salary for securities industry employees who work in New York City ($404,800) remained substantially higher in 2014 than for industry employees in the rest of New York State ($233,300) and the nation ($173,900). This reflects the concentration in New York City of highly compensated employees, such as chief executives and investment bankers.”
“In 2014, the average salary for securities industry employees working in Long Island reached $348,200, twice the amount of ten years earlier. For employees working in Westchester County, it grew by nearly 80 percent to reach $264,500. Average salaries for employees working in New Jersey grew by 41 percent to $178,800 (reaching $195,400 in Hudson County).”
A couple of things are worth noting. 1) The increase in compensation might not be a real trend, since banks began deferring compensation in 2010 or so. The fact that bonuses are high in 2014 might reflect that more deferred compensation has reached its vesting period. 2) Actual total compensation numbers might actually be higher than what the report describes, since the numbers are calculated from tax filings, and might not be adjusted for deductions.
The average salary in the securities industry is skewed by employees who earn very large salaries. To better understand how pay is distributed in the industry, a new rule (Section 953 of Dodd-Frank) requires firms to report a median salary for their employees and how that pay compares to the chief executive officer, beginning in 2017. Until then, OSC is using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to better understand wage distribution in the industry. In 2013 (the most recent data available), 23 percent of the workers in the securities industry in New York City earned more than $250,000, compared with less than 3 percent in the rest the City’s work force. Conversely, only 10 percent of industry employees earned less than $35,000 in 2013, compared with 45 percent in the rest of the City’s work force. As previously discussed, the securities industry has become more geographically diverse. Initially, lower-paying back-office jobs were relocated, but a large number of higher-paying jobs have been relocated since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, benefiting the City’s suburbs.
well a 6k-figure job is more than enough to live in SF and that is better than most can say. interesting where courage can take you if you have the pluck to see it through
I attended a 401k large plan conference a few years ago. There was a panel discussion that included someone from one of the big oil companies, another pleb, and the HR Director at Google. The Google person said their biggest challenge when it comes to 401ks is providing their employees with other investment options since nearly all of them max out their contributions in the first few months.
so tech guys are not only younger, cooler, smarter and better educated than us, they also are better at retirement planning than people who work in pensions? deary me.
If you use Google as the tech benchmark, then you have to limit the finance benchmark to name brand firms also. If you take all companies in the “technology sector”, they will not have the same characteristics.
it is well known that technology salaries are front-end loaded while finance jobs are back end loaded.
tech guys usually see higher pay in their 20s, 30s and 40s but top out in their 40s and begin to sharp declines as they quickly get left behind by advancements in technology. part of the drop off is that older tech workers turn into managers and after a while the managers lose their skills and can no longer manage the new breed of tech guys who do not respect the old fogey with the fancy title and limited contribution.
meanwhile, finance guys only really start to see their comp rise in their 40s and it generally accelerates for as long as they can keep working. that’s definitely the way it works in WM and i imagine it works well in IB and trading as long-term relationships are harvested.
yeah there are superstars in their 20s and 30s in both industries but the general trend is tech does better early and peaks early while finance accumulates over time and peaks at death basically.
That is true, but I would qualify this by saying that finance is evolving into an industry where old skills become obsolete, and in the higher paying finance jobs, it’s less common for people to survive until old age in the field.
tech is the future! even high finance jobs are in danger - look at Black rock’s dismissal of 400 ERAs and PMs few months back…I went to school in northern cal - very decent school i must say - and I am no where near the top (certainly above average) in earnings when compared to my college friends…lots of big shots making big bucks with big net worth…Some are computer science majors and they say the era of automation is coming…The 80s, 90s, 00s were the machine age…coal mining efficiency is 10 folds from two decades ago which means a coal mine that required 10 men 30 years ago now requires 1 man to have the same output etc (this can be confirmed by any energy sector analysts on AF)…So when Trump says he will bring back coal jobs…from where? from the machines? LMAO…but don’t want to go there on this thread…
btw, not sure why the firing of 400 front office people was a news because it has been happening in many of the top hedge funds and banks for few years now. Only matter of time before it wipes out ops, accounting, audit, trading, even research roles by automation and machine learning crap…I’ll give 10-15 years. The Economist gave 99% probability that these jobs would be eliminated (although not fully) in 10 years.
An economist who never wrote a single line of code in his life predicts the future of automation is laughable. I’ve worked in tech for a couple of years and I don’t think even people in tech believe in this 10-year prediction crap. Do you have any facts? or just throwing numbers around to scare the people.
Layoffs can happen for multiple reasons not just because of the advanced systems. Why didn’t you talk about how many people remained employed in the front office or replaced these people?
The real problem is that on this forum people throw fancy words like deep learning, machine learning, and AI but in reality, they have no real knowledge how do these things work? Obviously, automation is killing jobs as it did in many sectors before but jumping to a baseless conclusion that all sorts of finance would disappear in 10-years is certainly not true.
I am going to get concerned when I see progress towards a general AI. As long as we keep going down the path we are on, I think things will be OK. but I still think we as a society should be considering how to think about this stuff beforehand
Article is click bait. If you work in finance you gotta have a 7k figure job or gtfo. My granddaughter is an artist and makes 6k figures