Chief Executive Officers at Wall Street’s S&P 500 took home an average of $18.9 million in total compensation in 2024 – a 7% pay raise from the previous year, according to a report released by the AFL-CIO. This increase means CEOs made 285 times the median, or midpoint, income by workers – up from the already appalling 268-to-1 shown in last year’s annual report.
The AFL-CIO’s “2025 Executive Paywatch Report” analyzes new data to quantify the economic inequality between America’s CEOs and the workers who make their profits for them.
“Corporate CEOs are raking in millions, and now they’ll get another kickback from President Trump’s tax cut gift and anti-worker agenda,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond. “Trump is paying for this handout to CEOs by cutting health care, food assistance and hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on government investments.”
The report says, “The average CEO took home a $1.24 million raise last year while working families struggled to make ends meet.”
Together, CEOs listed in “Executive Paywatch” will save $738 million in income tax cuts, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The AFL-CIO says, this lost tax revenue alone could pay for:
* Medicaid health care for 81,028 working people.
* SNAP food assistance for 328,877 working people.
* School lunches for 925,508 students.
The labor federation’s statistics are based on corporations’ public filings.
“Corporate compensation filings are tedious reading, but they are a trove of information,” New York Times finance columnist Jeff Sommers wrote this summer. “That may be why they have never been uniformly popular in corner offices and why the Trump administration is beginning a process that could lead to the curtailment or demise of some of these disclosure requirements. In my view, that would be a shame. I would hate to lose access to any of the details being revealed by public corporations.”
Locally, a few prominent employers are instructive:
Caterpillar’s CEO-to-median worker pay ratio is 399-to-1; Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is 268-to-1; and Boyd Gaming (Par-A-Dice Casino) is 304-to-1.
For a slightly deeper dive, consider the Top 5 CEO pay by industry:
SECTOR AVG. CEO PAY AVG. WORKER PAY RATIO
Arts- Entertainment-Recreation: $35,159,894 $23,976 1,924-to-1
Educational Services $25,545,004 $68,015 618-to-1
Accommodation-Food Services $19,756,720 $78,119 380-to-1
Transportation-Warehousing $16,331,574 $80,280 315-to-1
Manufacturing $20,530,438 $89,848 302-to-1
And consider the connections between President Trump and CEOs who benefit from his economic policies.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk personally donated $288 million to Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, but his CEO pay, recently set at $29 billion is in the stratosphere compared to most CEOs. Obviously, it pales to the $159,917 media pay of Tesla workers.
These four CEOs or their companies all donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration:
* Palantir Technologies, whose CEO Alex Karp’s pay is 20 times his workers’ media pay;
* Google/Alphabet, whose CEO Sundar Pichai’s pay is 32 times his workers’ median pay;
* Amazon, whose CEO Jeff Bezos’s pay is 43 times his workers’ median pay; and
* Facebook/Meta, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pay is 65 times his workers’ median pay.
Elsewhere, Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Trump in the Oval Office and afterward pledged to invest $100 billion in U.S. manufacturing during his term. Cook’s pay is 650 times his workers’ median pay.
“Pay disparities of this magnitude reflect levels of income inequality that were considered repugnant 50 years ago,” Sommers commented. “The American social structure was flatter and CEO-to-worker pay ratios were lower then. Motivating executives is one thing. Rewarding them like absolute monarchs is another.”
For the full report, go to-
https://aflcio.org/paywatch?link_id=4&can_id=d28a0e75022b91d73fc95bc86b686390&source=email-daily-brief-july-xx-2025-17&email_referrer=email_2822817&email_subject=daily-brief-july-23-2025&&
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.