Posted on 09/01/2007 9:53:17 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
Top money managers earn such huge incomes that even when their compensation is mixed with the much lower pay of clerks, secretaries and others, the average pay in investment banking is 10 times that of all private sector jobs, new government data shows.
Investment banking paid an average weekly wage of $8,367, compared with $841 for all private sector jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a routine report issued Thursday.
The report also showed how far ahead hedge fund managers are of other investment bankers in making money.
In Fairfield County, Conn., home to many hedge funds, the average pay was $23,846 a week. In Manhattan, with a much broader mix of investment banking firms and seven times the number of employees, pay was much less, averaging $16,849 a week in the first quarter of 2006.
Nationally, investment banking accounted for just 0.1 percent of all private sector jobs, but it accounts for 1.3 percent of all wages, the bureau said. Of the nation’s 132.5 million private sector jobs, 173,340 were in investment banking in the first three months of 2006, the report stated.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There is good reason for this.
Did they bother to compare it with the PUBLIC Sector?
No of course not because then they would have to report the dirty little secret that the average pay for non Military Public Sector jobs eclipse private sector pay once you calculate in their benefits package.
That is true. lol. Of course even military pay is getting a little better. When I joined twenty years ago, I could barely make it with my mac and cheese boxes by the payday, but today I can have a hamburger every now and again. lol.
If I could get a license, I would want to be one of these hedge fund guys. The pay looks pretty good. I guess you have to go to school and have a degree or something? I can purchase one of those Magic 8 ball thingies to help me out and get by I’m sure.
Um...salaries for non-military public sector jobs certainly DO NOT eclipse investment banking industry salaries. From the article, the average salary for all people (including janitors and secretaries) working for I-banks is somewhere north of $430,000 / year, with the number at $1.24 million in Fairfield County, CT. You can add in all the benefits you’d like, but public sector workers don’t make anything in that universe.
I’m in the wrong business!
You mean to say you're not a kid five years out of college making $20 million per year?
People that sell money, make more money. They love money more than anything, so they make more of it. No surprise here.
Nope, wish I were.
But I am going back to college this semester. My head has a few cob-webs but I’m looking for a degree in applied math in business. One never knows. ;-)
I don’t understand why this is a problem. The only reason the nytimes and others run articles like these is to fuel envy in the underclass. What they should do is provide articles directing people how to become an investment banker and the responsibilities of an investment banker.
I do make an above average salary. No where near 400k but well above the average for an individual here in VA. My wife doesn’t work so I have to maintain a higher than average salary. Plus I like kids and have four of them.
So many have a very uninformed idea of what being rich is. Once I thought people who make what I do now were. Now that I am here it couldn’t be further from the case. An interesting thing happens when you make more money your expenses also increase. You do things like purchase a house and buy a second car that isn’t falling apart. You start saving for your kids college and become more self sufficient.
Suddenly you can begin to do things like take real vacations something we didn’t do for years. What also happens is you find yourself spending a lot more time at the office. I spend more time devoted to work and traveling for work than ever before but I also have more freedom than ever before as far as not being tied down to an office and being able to work from home occasionally. I suppose more than anything people need to realize that there is always a cost. Most people would not do what I do, they’d certainly like to make the money but that is where their interest would end.
Most people I imagine would not want to work as an investment banker but they most certainly would like the salary. As I’m sure most would like the salaries of doctors but would they want the long hours, responsibility, and risk of malpractice suits? It is easy when one is on outside looking in thinking of the prospect of another salary as if it were winning a lottery with not an hour spent of real work. If only that were true. The reality is never as sweet or as easy as imagined.
I remember reading about a year ago, Chelsea Clinton was working in hedge funds at one of the big N.Y.investment banks.
Where did I say this level of compensation was a problem? I think it's somewhat silly, because I think hedge fund investors are being stupid often grossly overpaying for talent, but it's not a problem if you're not that kind of investor.
In fact I'm glad that my son (whom I mentioned obliquely in an above post) is succesful (he's under 30 and earned $20 million in performance fees last year at his fund)
This is a question of supply and demand (and also, to some extent, fashion). It isn't a question of morality.
There are two kinds of people who say this is about morality and both are wrong -- there are the whiny leftists who hate all successful people, and there are the folks like you who try to paint some kind of Horatio Alger story of this all being about hard work and perceverence.
My son isn't succesful because he's extraordinarily hardworking, although he's certainly worked hard -- unlike you he has taken vacations. He's succesful because he has a relatively rare skillset and because investors are willing to compensate him (and more importantly, his boss) accordingly.
That's right. You wouldn't be able to purchase your $350,000 house with an interest-only mortgage and a five-year balloon payment with no verifiable income and not being able to speak English without these guys around to jigger the numbers for you.
I hope my finance degree comes in handy when I’m looking for jobs in 2-3 years.
You certainly didn’t. I suggest you apologize and try reading Maelstorm's post again.
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