Few Tears Shed as Wall Street Braces for More Layoffs, Weak Q3 Results
Aaron Task
New York City Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli predicts the securities industry will shed another 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, The NYT reports. That figure excludes most of the 30,000 bank tellers and other branch employees expected to lose their jobs at Bank of America.
DiNapoli also reported the average pay for securities industry employees in New York City rose 16.1% in 2010 to $361,330, almost six times greater than the average salary for other private sector jobs.
In separate but related news, two former Census Bureau officials report the median household income in America fell 3.2% during the recession from Dec. 2007 to June 2009, and then fell another 6.7% during the so-called 'recovery' from June 2009 through June 2011.
Here, again, is why there's so much anger and frustration with Wall Street: While ordinary Americans suffer from falling income, people in the securities industry have been minting money in recent years, thanks largely to massive taxpayer bailouts and the ongoing subsidies from the Federal Reserve.
The only real surprise is that it's taken so long for anti-Wall Street protests to take hold, as Henry and I discuss in the accompanying clip.
Since January 2008, the securities industry has lost 22,000 jobs in New York alone. With more cuts coming, and estimates for industry earnings coming down sharply -- including some forecasts for a loss at Goldman Sachs -- it appears the Wall Street gravy train is finally starting to slow down.
Expect few tears to be shed.
VIEW VIDEO
Oct. 12, 2011