Taking stock: Minimum wage would be $33 an hour if it grew at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses, new study finds Wall Street bonuses have risen 1,000% since 1985 – going from $13,970 to $153,700 in 2018, according to a new report on wage disparity By comparison, the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour since 2009) has increased 116% during the same 33-year period The total value of all bonuses handed out to the 181,300 New York City-based Wall Street employees in 2018 was $27.5 billion, down 17% from 2017 That still amounts to three times the combined annual earnings of all 640,000 American workers earning the federal minimum wageBy Valerie Bauman Social Affairs Reporter For Dailymail.com Published: 21:14 GMT, 26 March 2019 | Updated: 21:16 GMT, 26 March 2019 Viewcomments Minimum wage workers would be making $33.51 an hour if their earnings had grown at the same rate of Wall Street bonuses, according to a new report. Those big bonuses have risen 1,000 percent since 1985 – going from $13,970 to $153,700 in 2018. By comparison, the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour since 2009) increased 116 percent during the same period, according to the analysis by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies. The total value of all bonuses handed out to the 181,300 New York City-based Wall Street employees in 2018 was $27.5 billion, or three times the combined annual earnings of all 640,000 American workers earning the federal minimum wage. The bonuses are paid in addition to regular salaries and other types of compensation, including stock options and health care. The average salary on Wall Street was $422,500 in 2017, the most recent period for which data was available. This graph illustrates the change in annual Wall Street bonuses (in blue) alongside that of the annualized federal minimum wage (in orange) from 1985-2018 It’s worth noting that Wall Street bonuses were down 17 percent in 2018 to an average of about $153,700, according to the New York State Comptroller’s office. Those bonuses also remain below the pre-recession high of $191,360 in 2006. The report attributes the 2018 drop to many banks planning ahead to give out bigger bonuses in 2017 - in advance of major tax changes. In other words, the lower bonuses are a market correction after an unusually high pay-out year. Compared to the average American worker, Wall Street employees have little to complain about in terms of compensation. While many states, including Washington, California and Massachusetts, have taken steps to increase the minimum wage, but even efforts to bring it to $11-15 in those states, the average worker is left behind. At the same time, the income of America’s richest workers has been rising dramatically, with economists finding that the top 0.001 percent saw their annual pay rise faster than the Gross Domestic Product over the past four decades. In fact, pre-tax income for this super-rich class of Americans has gone from an average of roughly $16.6 million in 1980 to $121.9 million in 2014 – a 635 percent increase. That far outstrips the rate of income growth among the middle class, which saw a 42 percent rise in average pay since 1980. The difference is even more pronounced when compared to the bottom 50 percent of U.S. earners, who have seen average incomes rise 1.4 percent during the same period. All of this adds up to major disparity between the richest Americans and the bottom half of U.S. earners. Read more: Share or comment on this article: All rights reserved for this news site dailymail and under his responsibility