Finance & Insurance Industry Pay Trends
Updated April 5, 2012
2012: In Q1 2012, wages in the finance and insurance industry continued to grow beyond their previous peak levels. With a quarter-over-quarter growth of 0.2 percent, wages ended 0.6 percent above their previous peak levels in Q3 2008.
2007-2011: With disasters like the collapse of Lehman Brothers, one would think the finance and insurance industry would have suffered heavily from falling wages.
However, this industry is much larger than Wall Street, and the market price for its workers basically tracked national trends in The PayScale Index right through the start of the recession, into the middle of 2008.
Pay then went south faster at the end of 2008 for finance workers, compared to employees in other industries. However, between Q2 2009 and the end of 2009 finance earnings rose 1 percent, while most all other industries stayed flat, putting them back on par with national trends through 2010. By the end of 2011, finance and insurance industry wages grew to surpass their 2008 peak levels.
