The United States topped the list in 2018 for the country with the highest gap between CEO and worker pay. In that year, for every U.S. dollar an average worker received, the average CEO earned 265 U.S. dollars. India, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the Netherlands rounded out the top five for countries with the highest CEO to worker pay.

The 99 percent

It is a well-known issue that wages for average workers in the United States have been stagnating. Average hourly earnings for American employees, which have been hovering just below 11 U.S. dollars, have not gone up by much over the past year. The federal minimum wage in the United States has been 2.13 U.S. dollars for tipped workers and 7.25 U.S. dollars for non-tipped workers since 2009 and would be much higher today if minimum wage was adjusted for inflation.

The one percent

The gap between normal workers and CEOs is particularly high in the U.S. The richest CEO in 2018 was Elon Musk, with an annual compensation of about 2.84 billion U.S. dollars. America is also home to the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, who is the head of Amazon.com.

In 2022, it was estimated that the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 344.3 in the United States. This indicates that, on average, CEOs received more than 344 times the annual average salary of production and nonsupervisory workers in the key industry of their firm.

In 2020, the CEO of the apparel and footwear company VF Corp received ***** U.S. dollars in compensation for every one dollar received by the company's median worker. This was the highest CEO to worker wage ratio of the year. In comparison, the bank Wells Fargo & Company had a ratio of *** to *.

In the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth. Income inequality in the U.S. Despite the idea that the United States is a country where hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will inevitably lead to success, this is often not the case. In 2023, 7.4 percent of U.S. households had an annual income under 15,000 U.S. dollars. With such a small percentage of people in the United States owning such a vast majority of the country’s wealth, the gap between the rich and poor in America remains stark. The top one percent The United States follows closely behind China as the country with the most billionaires in the world. Elon Musk alone held around 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Over the past 50 years, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio has exploded, causing the gap between rich and poor to grow, with some economists theorizing that this gap is the largest it has been since right before the Great Depression.

Residents of the District of Columbia had the highest personal income per capita in 2023, at ******* U.S. dollars. Mississippi residents, on the other hand, had the lowest personal income per capita, at ****** U.S. dollars. What is personal income? Personal income is the income that a worker receives from all sources, including salary, wages, bonuses, income from self-employment, dividends from investments, and receipts from real estate investments. Because of this, total personal income is different from the average wage, as personal income takes more factors into account than just salary and compensation. Income in the United States Wages and salaries in the United States can vary greatly depending on the profession a person is in, and the rise (or fall) of wages is seen as a key economic indicator as to the financial health of the country’s residents. In recent years, the increasing gap between CEO compensation and the compensation of the average worker has brought the issue of stagnating wages to the forefront of the national conversation.

Health care, trade, and publishing were the three industries with the highest share of women in leadership positions in Germany in 2023. In health care, almost ** percent of leadership positions were held by women. Career prospects When it comes to women in the workplace being in high positions, there has been a positive development in many countries across the world. In 2022, there were ** countries in which women held the highest position of executive power. This is a noticeable increase from 2005, when this was the case in only five countries. This progress shows that it is now becoming easier for women to develop their careers than it was 20 years ago. When it comes to where Germany stands concerning gender equality, Germany currently ranks ******* on the global gender gap index with a score of ****. This considers not only the political standing of women, but also education, economics, and health-based criteria. Could things be better? Although a lot of progress has been made in Germany when it comes to the equality of the sexes, there is still a gender pay gap of **** percent. This is around five percent higher than the average of EU27 countries, demonstrating there is still work to be done when it comes to achieving equality for women in the workplace. It is estimated that in Europe it will take around ******** until gender does not play a role in the amount of money people earn. In other parts of the world, this figure is estimated to be a lot higher.