WSJ Blog: For Bankers, Fairfield Pay Beats Manhattan Pay

"Manhattan has the most investment bankers, but Fairfield County, Conn., has the richest, according to a recent report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to the report, investment banking is the second highest paid industry in the U.S, behind only securities brokerage: weekly pay averaged $8,367 in the first quarter of 2006 (although the first quarter is inflated by annual bonuses).
A quarter of the country’s 173,430 investment banking employees work in Manhattan, earning average weekly pay of $16,849 in the first quarter of 2006. Less than 4% of the total live in Fairfield, but they earned an average of $23,846. For the full year through last March, the average annual investment banking salary in Fairfield topped $500,000.
The county with the largest concentration of investment banking employees is Hudson County, N.J. (home of Jersey City, across the Hudson River from Manhattan). They make up 3.9% of the county’s 235,121 jobs, and earned an average weekly wage of $4,297 in early 2006. – Greg Ip"