Among the working people in the US, how many earn more than $100k/year?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States shows that only 6.61% of Americans had incomes exceeding $100,000 in 2010.
But how many people were surveyed? Apparently all of the Americans there were. US population is about 300 million. In total 244 million individuals aged 15 or higher received income in 2010 as recorded by the United States Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm is the official data source behind the 6.61% statistics. That 6.61% percent means 13,970,000 individuals.
Goldman Sachs has about 30,000 perm employees. Most investment banks (or the IB arm of universal banks) employ many more. Morgan Stanley has almost 60,000. I would guess the combined headcount in the sell-side exceeds 300,000. I also guess Wall St + Chicago finance sector would support at least 200,000 jobs paying 6-figures. Silicon Valley + other high-tech regions may also support a similar number of 6-figure jobs.
Like any large scale survey, I’m sure there are many major sources of estimation errors. Not sure which are the most severe —
* did the people being surveyed lie about their income, perhaps to reduce tax?
* did some people miss the survey altogether?
* Were some people between jobs in 2010 therefore earned lower than their normal income?