RECENTLY JPMorgan Chase and HSBC announced reductions in the size of their work force. This comes on top of downsizing since the financial crisis by many of the city’s largest private sector employers, including Bank of America, Citigroup, BNY Mellon, American Express, American International Group and MetLife.

In the last five years, the city has seen a net loss of 25,000 financial services jobs. Banks and insurance companies, which face stricter regulations as a result of the crisis, have shed the most jobs, while private equity and investment-services firms have enjoyed robust growth. Areas where jobs have been added, like compliance and risk management, don’t directly contribute to the bottom line.

Critics who think the financial-services sector is still too big, and that salaries at the top are still too high, might say: So what? But that is not a view anyone who cares about our city can afford to take.

Most of the estimated 310,000 financial-services workers in New York City — down from 360,000 in 2000 — are in the middle class. Fifty-one percent make less than $100,000 a year, many of them in back-office functions. Over two-thirds live in the five boroughs: nearly a third in Manhattan, an equal number in Brooklyn and Queens. Another 700,000 or so jobs — in fields like hospitality, health care, law and accounting, construction and technology — exist because of Wall Street.