Late last week, we reported that the average Wall Street bonus totaled nearly $173,000 in 2014. Altogether, New York City's nearly 170,000 securities industry employees took home $28.5 billion in bonuses, according to the New York Office of the State Comptroller.
Shortly after the release, the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies released a report showing that those bonuses equaled roughly double what all full-time federal minimum-wage workers earned last year. And that's just one of the jaw-dropping comparisons you can draw to the Wall Street bonus pool.
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The $28.5 billion is more than double not only the minimum-wage earnings figure, but also annual Facebook revenues. It's nearly 18 times what the New York Times earned in revenue in 2014. It's more than 80 times what American Sniper — 2014's top-grossing movie — has pulled in at the domestic box office to date.
And keep in mind that while the average bonus was nearly $173,000, some highly paid workers have been known to take home millions of dollars in annual bonuses. So it wouldn't take too many to try to buy the New York Yankees (according to Forbes' valuation of the team). And if enough generous Wall Streeters got together, they could help the federal government double its spending on Head Start.
One more fact to keep in mind: this $28.5 billion is on top of the regular salaries Wall Street workers earn. As of 2013, New York City securities industry workers earned $355,500 on average (including bonuses), according to the New York Comptroller's office.
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