Community-Bank CEOs Make Less Than Average Wall Street Employee

(Bloomberg) -- The chief executives of U.S. community banks make less than an average employee on Wall Street.

That’s the finding from a survey by advisory firm Crowe LLP released this week. The average total compensation for a small-bank CEO is $295,103, based on responses from 778 firms around the country. The average annual compensation per employee at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was $369,438 in the first half of this year, according to calculations based on the firm’s regulatory filings.

The gap persists even after Wall Street banks cut their pay, some as much as two-thirds, following the 2008 financial crisis. The number of banks in the U.S. has been shrinking consistently in the last two decades as community lenders merge to survive and compete with larger rivals.

Read more: Wall Street’s Pay Slump Since the Crisis Is Led by Goldman Sachs

The majority of the banks in Crowe’s survey were smaller than $500 million in assets. Only 13 of them had assets between $5 billion and $52 billion. Presidents, the second best-paid position among such banks according to the survey, averaged $269,029 while the lowest paid tellers average $28,657.

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