The Wall Street bonus pool soared to a record high of $49.2 billion last year, a mighty sum that nevertheless fell short of what city budget planners had predicted, the New York State comptroller said in a report on Thursday.
The growth of the pool came as profits surged on Wall Street and the cost of living soared in New York, where an affordability crisis powered the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year.
The office of the comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said Wall Street profits jumped 30 percent last year, to $65.1 billion, and the roughly 200,000 people employed in the securities industry were awarded an average bonus of $246,900 per person. That is roughly three times as much as the city’s median household income, according to the United States Census Bureau.
While the bonus pool grew by an impressive 9 percent, the city’s financial plan was based in part on projections it would rise by 15 percent, the report said. The mismatch between those optimistic projections and the reality means tax revenue from bonuses this year is likely to fall short of expectations. Mr. Mamdani faces a $5.4 billion hole he must plug in the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, estimated the shortfall in tax revenue from the bonuses would be between $100 and $200 million, but said that was just a drop in the bucket of the $18 billion the state collects each year in income tax.
“Wall Street generates a lot of economic activity and a lot of tax support for the city, so when Wall Street has a good year, as they did in 2025, that’s really good for the city,” she said. “What is maybe not great this time around is the city knew Wall Street was having a good year so they baked that into the budget, and they had a more optimistic view than the comptroller’s office now does.”
On Tuesday, the Mamdani administration said the growth of the bonus pool showed the importance of raising taxes on the city’s highest earners and biggest companies.
“This report makes clear how now more than ever we need to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers and the most profitable corporations to make the most expensive city in the country more affordable,” Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, said in a statement.
The strong-but-still-disappointing growth of the bonus pool highlights the Gordian knot of the city’s affordability crisis. The concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few has distorted New York’s social fabric, raising the cost of living to the point that even many well-compensated professionals feel financially insecure.
But to fund policies aimed at addressing that crisis, the mayor is seeking more tax revenue from the richest New Yorkers. And even more urgently, he needs that tax revenue to tackle the budget deficit, which has already led him to curb or delay some planned spending.
Mr. DiNapoli pointed to that dynamic in a statement on Thursday, telling New Yorkers that the success of Wall Street was a boon to the city as a whole, even if there might be economic challenges ahead.
“When Wall Street does well, it’s good for our state and city budgets, which are reliant on the industry’s significant tax contributions,” he said. “However, we are seeing slower job growth, and geopolitical conflicts have global repercussions that pose extraordinary risks for the short- and long-term outlook on the financial sector and for broader economic markets.”
The report on estimated Wall Street bonuses, which the comptroller’s office releases annually, is based on an analysis of personal income tax withholding trends. The office said the bonuses it tracks are both cash payments for work performed in 2025 and deferred bonuses from past years that have been newly cashed in.
In an interview, Rahul Jain, the deputy comptroller for New York City in the state comptroller’s office, said he thought the softer-than-expected growth of the bonus pool would not be “a major problem for the city this year.”
“There are other places they can get money from,” he said.
On the whole, Mr. Jain added, the report was “still pretty good news.”
“They were more optimistic about what that growth would be, and that will hurt a little bit.” he said. “But every dollar counts — especially right now.”
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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