While still below pre-crisis levels, Wall Street cash bonuses are forecast to have risen in 2012 to their highest since 2010, New York state’s comptroller said on Tuesday.
The securities industry’s bonus pool was expected to total $20 billion, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said at a press conference, up 8 percent from 2011 but below levels seen in 2006 and 2007, before the financial crisis.
DiNapoli said part of the 2012 bonus figure will also contain bonuses that are deferred for future years and does not wholly reflect cash that has been paid out already.
The average cash bonus rose an estimated 9 percent to almost $121,900 in 2012, the comptroller said. The average bonus rose more than the overall pool because the pool was shared among fewer workers than in 2011.
DiNapoli said he expects Wall Street to continue to cut jobs in 2013. Employment totaled 169,700 in December 2012, 1,000 less than the year before, according to the report. The securities industry in New York has regained only about 30 percent of the jobs lost since the crisis.