Wall Street interns are earning more money than ever this summer

Wall Street interns have always made a ton of money, especially compared to their peers in other industries.

But this summer many are earning more than ever.

Intern paychecks at Wall Street banks are based on the annual salary that analysts earn.

For years, that base salary was $70,000 across the Street - not counting bonuses, which range from $15,000 to $70,000.

Then, last fall, a number of banks decided to up the ante and raise analyst pay to $85,000 a year.

That's the case at Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to Wall Street Oasis, a message board for finance insiders, Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, and Barclays have also bumped analyst salaries to $85,000 a year in the investment-banking divisions.

And in London the numbers are similar.

Business Insider could not confirm the Wall Street Oasis reports, but we do know that when one bank makes a change on Wall Street, others tend to follow pretty quickly.

So what does $85,000 a year translate to for summer interns?

It works out to more than $1,600 a week. Most investment-banking internship programs run for 10 weeks, so that means they're pulling in upwards of $16,000 for the summer.

Not a bad haul.

For a 40-hour workweek, they'd be earning about $40 an hour. But we know, of course, that no junior banker is working 40 hours a week - not even the interns.

One such intern recently told us he worked 79 hours his first week on the job and 73 hours his second week. At that rate, he's not earning much more than $20 an hour.

Not the most glamorous wage. But remember, summer interns are usually rising seniors in college - they don't even have bachelor's degrees yet. So they could do a lot worse.