Private equity professionals were paid less for 2024, but at least they worked less too

Private equity is no longer the promised land it used to be for over-worked and under-paid investment bankers. The industry has hit tough times, and while you might find some more comfortable working hours there than in other places, your pay might be someway off what you expected it to be.

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Our 2025 Compensation & Lifestyle report received over 2,500 responses from professionals in the financial services sector, including ones in private equity. These professionals noted an average increase in their bonuses of almost 50%, well ahead of the buy-side average of 24% and the global average of 22%.

The number of hours worked in the industry varied quite substantially. Associates worked for an average of 58 hours per week, but those ranked above them worked 50 to 52 hours per week, on average. There are much fewer analysts in private equity (proportionally to banking), but the analysts there are worked a mere 42 hours (or so they said).

Even with those short work weeks, private equity was not very well compensated on a per-hour basis compared to other buy-side roles. Hedge fund juniors earned twice as much per hour. For VP-equivalents the disparity rose to a third, and for MD-equivalents it reached a quarter.

It’s worth noting, however, that private equity professionals have another compensation component that we did not account for in our survey: carried interest. This is a small, allocated fraction of a deal’s equity that is distributed as a reward to the team that worked on it. Carried interest can range from zero (for juniors) to 100’s of millions of dollars/euros/pounds.

As carried interest is only paid when a deal is successfully exited by a firm, and PE funds have been busy selling investments to one another just to keep juices flowing, carried interest hasn’t been a huge thing in recent years. Hypothetically, funds have jacked up regular bonuses to compensate (as appeared to have happened at KKR); it seems that this was not a universal trend. However, carried interest is often only paid to people at principal level and above.

In spite of the industry’s woes, and its subsequently limited bonus generosity, its employees remained stoic. “The global arena comes with challenges which need to be dealt with,” said one Zurich-based director for a megafund. “My employer gives enough freedom and provides tools,” he added. “I’ve learned to let go and not takes things too personally.”

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