Wall Street firms earned $45.9 billion in the first six months of 2026, already more than New York City expected them to make all year.
That figure comes from a report New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released Tuesday. First-half profits jumped 51.3% from the same stretch last year, when the industry earned $30.4 billion. In plain terms, Wall Street made about half again as much money in the first half of this year as it did a year ago. If that pace holds through December, DiNapoli said full-year profits could top $90 billion, smashing last year’s record of $65.1 billion.
The report measures the pretax profits of the brokerage businesses of the 168 member firms of the New York Stock Exchange, the traditional yardstick for how the securities industry is doing.
DiNapoli pointed to three main drivers: heavy spending tied to artificial intelligence, a pickup in mergers and acquisitions, and high trading volume as markets swung up and down. Put simply, when companies buy each other, sell new stock and investors trade more, Wall Street collects more fees.
“Wall Street is having an exceptionally strong year,” DiNapoli said, adding that the industry has stayed resilient despite geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty.
The numbers leave New York City’s own budget forecasts far behind. The city had projected Wall Street profits would fall 30% this year to $45.3 billion. The industry passed that number by the end of June. The city also expected the 2026 bonus pool to shrink by 20%. DiNapoli now expects bonuses to rise instead, barring a major economic shock. Firms spent 18.8% more on pay, including salaries, bonuses and stock awards, in the first half of the year than they did a year earlier.
For everyday New Yorkers, the story is really about tax money. Wall Street paychecks and bonuses are taxed heavily, and that revenue pays for schools, transit, police and other services.
The securities industry generated an estimated $26.3 billion in state tax revenue in the 2025-26 fiscal year, up 28.5% from the year before. That works out to about 1 of every 5 dollars New York State collects in taxes. Nearly 9 of every 10 of those dollars came from personal income taxes paid by people who work in the industry.
New York City collected an estimated $7.8 billion from the industry in its 2026 fiscal year, a new record that beat the previous high of $6.9 billion set in 2022. That is roughly 1 of every 11 dollars the city takes in. Wall Street workers alone paid about 1 in 4 dollars of all personal income tax the city collected.
Jobs are growing too. New York City’s securities industry employed a record 207,400 people in 2025, up 7,000 from the year before, and early data show it on pace to add another 5,300 jobs this year. DiNapoli’s office estimates that about 1 in 13 jobs in the city is tied directly or indirectly to Wall Street, from restaurant workers and building staff to accountants and drivers.
The pay gap remains wide. The average Wall Street salary in the city, including bonuses, rose 11.1% to $561,770 in 2025. That is more than five times the $106,880 average for everyone else working in the city’s private sector.
New York still holds the most securities jobs by far, with 223,600 statewide in 2025, more than double California’s 102,600. But other states are growing faster from smaller bases. Texas added 18,800 jobs from 2019 to 2025, a jump of about one-quarter, and Utah grew fastest at 46.1%.
The report also flagged real risks. DiNapoli named ongoing global conflicts, high inflation, rising interest rates, the outsized role of artificial intelligence companies in driving profits and the federal deregulation push as threats to the second half of the year. Those warnings land in a week when the 10-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2002, a sign that borrowing costs are climbing fast.
That is why the comptroller has urged state and city leaders not to treat a boom year as permanent. Earlier this year, when he reported record 2025 bonuses, DiNapoli cautioned against using the windfall to expand spending and said the money would be better used to build up reserves for a true rainy day. His latest report frames the profits the same way, saying strong results should keep boosting revenue as long as there is no recession or major market disruption.
DiNapoli’s office will publish its official 2026 bonus estimate in March 2027, once tax withholding data comes in.
JBizNews Desk | Albany, N.Y.
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