NEW YORK, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Bonus pay is dropping not from Washington mandates but due to business conditions in U.S. offices far from Wall Street, various workers said.
Chicago management consultant Anthony Abraham said his bonus of $50,000 a year ago would be about half that this year, The New York Times reported Thursday. Philadelphia salesman Jan Klincewicz, although he changed companies, said his base pay and bonus check dropped sharply in 2008, the bonus falling from $143,000 to around $24,000 in one year, the newspaper reported.
On Wall Street, the bastion of the bonus culture, headlines and eyebrows are raised by the size of commission checks. Merrill Lynch handed out $3.6 billion in bonus checks to 700 employees during a year in which after the firm lost $27 billion, the Times said.
The excesses have lead to a provision in the $787 economic stimulus package that calls for limits on bonus pay.
But, the bonus system goes beyond big banks. About 10 percent of all U.S. employees rely on bonuses, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. For businesses with under 99 workers, bonus checks are handed out to 14 percent of the employees, the Bureau said.
