Major investment banks have raised their standard base salary this spring for recent college graduates to $85,000, the first rise after five years in which the salaries hovered near $70,000.

At the complex in Lower Manhattan formerly known as the World Financial Center, the vacancy rate — which soared to 41 percent after Merrill Lynch consolidated offices after the financial crisis — is now less than 5 percent.

And in a return of high-stakes deal-making, large American companies executed more mergers and acquisitions last year than they did the year before the global financial crisis, earning huge fees for their Wall Street advisers in the process.

Seven years after a crisis that shook Wall Street to its core, the financial sector’s economic imprint has largely recovered. The number of people working in the securities business nationally has returned to 2007 levels, as has the gap between the compensation of Wall Street workers and that of everyone else. The financial sector as a whole is reporting profits that are as large a share of the overall economy as in the early 2000s and more than double their average level over the 70 years ended in 1999.