By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Earnings for workers in New York's securities industry fell more last year than any other time in recorded history, the Independent Budget Office announced Tuesday, harkening dark times for the city's economy.
Even as the market rebounded from the crash, wages for Wall Street workers tumbled 21.5 percent from 2008 to 2009, the study said, with the average employee making $311,279, compared to $396,370 during the previous year and $412,915 the year before that.
This type of decrease wasn't even seen during the Great Depression, IBO Senior Economist David Belkin said.
"[Wall Street wages] kind of just petered around," Belkin explained.
While $311K is nothing to sneeze at, the earnings fall will have major ramifications for city's economy, the economist predicted.
Considering both the drop in wages and the impact of layoffs within the industry, "an estimated $21.4 billion in wages and salaries vanished in the city’s securities sector last year," the study noted.
"That takes a big piece out of all wages and salaries in the city," Belkin explained. "There's a ripple effect."
As a result, Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city is expecting revenue from sales and income taxes to fall by $12 billion between 2008 and 2011, according to the New York Post.
Still, the outlook might not be as grim as the IBO study suggests.
As James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute pointed out to the Post, the 2009 earnings numbers do not reflect the full benefits of 2009's economic upswing.
"They tell you more about 2008 profits and don't say anything about 2009," Parrott told the paper. "They're meaningful as a measure of the depths of the recession. They're not a reflection of the banner year Wall Street had in 2009."
