Private sector bankers are greedy and overpaid, right? Turns out federal regulators overseeing the banks are rolling in the dough too.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Paul H. Kupiec concluded in a recent report that the average employee of a federal bank regulatory agency received well over two times the average compensation of a private banker.
Kupiec explains that in 2012 the average annual salary of a private bank employee was $49,540, which is only slightly above the annual compensation across all occupations, $45,790.
Federal bank regulators enjoyed much higher payroll checks. The study says that before the Dodd-Frank Act, the average employee of a federal bank regulatory agency earned 2.3 times the average compensation of a private banker. As of last year, that ratio increased to over 2.7 — and in some cases considerably more.
According to his findings, the average salary for an employee at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) exceeded $190,000 in 2012.
Kupiec believes that compensation is likely even more lucrative at the Federal Reserve, but the Fed refuses to publish payroll data
These generous salaries are not just going to employees with specialized skills. Secretaries at the OCC earn an average of $79,182 per year. The FDIC’s motor vehicle operators make $82,130. And human resources management trainees at the CFPB rake in $110,759 a year.
Kupiec breaks the payroll numbers down further in the report.
“In 2012, 68% of FDIC and CFPB staff—and 66% at the OCC—earned above $100,000 a year. Nearly 19% of the CFPB and OCC staff earn more than $180,000 a year. At the OCC, 10.5% of workers earn above $200,000 a year, at the FDIC 9.3%,” reads the study.
It continues, “Fewer than 7% of employees in any of these regulatory agencies earned less than $50,000. In other words, 93% of the employees in these federal bank regulatory agencies earned more than the average banker’s salary in 2012.”
Kupiec explains that these findings blow holes in the popular myth that all private sector bankers take home far greater salaries than the rest of us.
He told The Daily Caller News Foundation, “We all know that there are some very high compensated bankers in the world, but there are a whole lot of bankers that are just ordinary small businessmen and they are not getting astronomical salaries.”
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