On bizarro Street, $870K is ‘underpaid’

Wall Street workers weren’t satisfied with their pay last year.

Traders and bankers were more likely to believe that they weren’t compensated fairly for their work in 2016 — even though average compensation at banks and hedge funds neared the $1 million mark, according to a new survey .

Hedge fund managers and asset managers last year saw a 19 percent rise in their average compensation, to $873,000, according to the spring survey of more than 4,700 financial industry employees around the world, conducted by headhunting firm Options Group.

Still, only 33 percent of hedgies who trade bonds, commodities and currencies at smaller firms thought they were compensated fairly, according to the survey. At larger funds, it was 45 percent.

Some of those gripes may come from dashed expectations. Late last year, some bond traders told Options Group they expected their total compensation to triple.

“Where I notice greater dissatisfaction with pay this year is on the hedgefund side,” Jessica Lee, executive director at Options Group, told The Post. “It’s been a difficult investment environment for the past few years, and it just starts to wear them down.”

The hedge-fund industry also has been seeing a broad investor pushback against its pay model — generally 2 percent of assets, plus 20 percent of investment gains, though that’s been shrinking — since cheap, broad indexes have been bigger winners.

Bank employees took home an average of $775,000 last year, a 3 percent rise from last year.

For stock traders, 44 percent at small firms were satisfied. Even less, 36 percent, were happy with their comp at bigger funds.