Goldman Sachs Group Inc., bowing to public pressure to cut the size of its bonuses, will make the smallest payouts relative to revenue in its history as a public company.

Staffers at the Wall Street firm will hardly be going home empty-handed; they will make an average of $500,000 per person and top executives take home millions of dollars in pay for their work in 2009. But Goldman set aside $16.19 billion for compensation, or 35.8% of its net revenue to pay for compensation and benefits, about $3 billion less than expected...