The pay slips of Wall Street’s rank and file are getting a little heavier. Less so for the big bosses.
The gap between what bank CEOs and their staffs take home in pay has narrowed significantly since the financial crisis, driven mostly by a drop in compensation for the leaders of the five biggest Wall Street firms, according to a Wall Street Journal review of bank regulatory filings.
The average pay for a worker at the five companies jumped to new highs in 2014, but pay remained well below pre-crisis levels for chief executives. The CEOs last year on average made 124 times the average worker at the banks, down 55 percent from 273 times in 2006.
The differential between CEOs’ and workers’ pay may get more attention once the Securities and Exchange Commission finalizes a rule mandating that all public companies report how much more the CEO made than a typical employee.
The top bank executives are still well paid. Last year, the heads of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc. were awarded $92.5 million collectively, or $18.5 million on average.
But that figure represents a 47 percent decline from the $173.6 million the five CEOs of those banks took home in 2006. The average paycheck for workers increased 17 percent.
