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 *.

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.

Context

There are two commonly understood ways in which a company is considered public: first, the company’s securities trade on public markets; and second, the company discloses certain business and financial information regularly to the public.

With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting many aspects of the business, a large portion of companies have proceeded with executive compensation adjustments as a response. Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%.
Excessive CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills. This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more).

Content

CEO_compensation_top50_2020.csv contains data about the top 50 paid CEOs in 2020. Parameters include: - Total Granted Compensation (TGC) - Total Realized Compensation (TRC) - Total Shareholder Return (TSR) in % - TSR 1YR growth in % - TGC 1YR growth in % - TRC 1YR growth in %

CEO_largestrevenue_highestpaid_2020-21.csv contains data about the CEO & Employee pay at the largest companies by revenue in 2020/2021, as well as the New York Times published 200 highest-paid CEOs in 2020. Parameters include: - CEO Total Compensation - Median Employee Pay - Pay change over previous year - Fiscal Year Revenue - Revenue change over previous year - CEO to Employee Pay Ratio

Acknowledgements

Source: CGLytics and Equilar

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