Lawyers Make Up 6.2 Percent of the Nation’s Highest Earners
The ranks of the nation’s highest earners—the .1 percent of Americans who make $1.7 million or more—are dominated by executives, managers and supervisors, but lawyers are also well-represented.
Forty-one percent of the top earners are executives and managers at nonfinancial companies, and 18 percent are managers at financial firms or financial professionals at any kind of firm, the Washington Post reports.
Next come lawyers, who make up 6.2 percent of top earners, followed by real estate professionals, at 4.7 percent; and media and sports figures, at 3 percent.
The statistics are based on research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley Heim, who reviewed tax returns for the information. Their findings are evidence that boosts in executive pay are contributing to growing income disparities that are at their highest levels since the Great Depression, the story says.
