Discrimination In The Workplace: Wall Street Remains Overwhelmingly White And Male While Bonuses Soar

Wall Street is flying high. Financial-sector stocks are up nearly 25 percent since Donald Trump was elected president, as the new administration has signaled intentions to repeal Obama-era financial regulations and filled the economic team with Goldman Sachs executives.

But a new analysis shows that while big gains for Wall Street may produce wealth for the small number of those working in the financial services field, that workforce is sorely lacking in, well, non-white males.

A report published Wednesday by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies says Wall Street bonus growth has surged compared to the minimum wage, and that discrepancy has contributed to racial and gender inequality.

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From 1985 to 2016, the average Wall Street bonus has grown by 890 percent — or 343 percent when adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, the minimum wage has only increased by 116 percent, which is actually a reduction of 3 percent when adjusted for inflation.

The radically different trajectories of Wall Street bonuses and the minimum wage not only illustrates America's growing income inequality but also highlights a racial and gender divide.

"Workers at the bottom of the wage scale are predominantly people of color and female," the report's authors wrote. "Whereas those in the financial industry’s upper echelons are overwhelmingly white and male."

At the five largest investment banks, 84 to 87 percent of executives and top managers are white and 66 to 84 percent are male, the report said. The racial and gender composition of minimum wage workers looks radically different—only 44 percent of minimum wage workers are white and only 37 percent are male.

The report also showed that white males overwhelmingly get to take part in the Wall Street bonus pool, which now stands at $24 billion annually. That pool is larger than the total earnings of all full-time minimum wage workers in the U.S., which is now valued at $15 billion.