CEOs of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies — the 500 leading publicly traded firms in the United States — made $17.7 million on average in 2023, more than 268 times their median worker’s income, according to an AFL-CIO report released this month.
This year’s Executive Paywatch Report, which the AFL-CIO releases annually, presents a snapshot of the persistent inequality in the American economy. The wealthiest corporate executives continue to prioritize their own salaries over those of workers whose labor makes the companies’ profits possible.
AFL-CIO researchers reviewed compensation data for executives at 3,000 companies, including the 500 companies in the S&P 500 Index. They found that it would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what S&P 500 Index company CEOs receive in just one year — even as these corporations continue to raise prices on working people.
With Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda promising further tax cuts for the rich and big corporations, that extreme inequity will only worsen if Donald Trump is elected.
“Working people are sick and tired of politicians like Donald Trump pushing massive tax giveaways for CEOs whose already bloated salaries, bonuses and stock options are driving inequality in our country. Today, the very CEOs who benefited most from Trump’s tax gift to the wealthy are making 268 times what their workers are making. And while corporate profits and stock prices surge, working people’s wages aren’t keeping up,” said Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.
“Years of poor policy decisions have favored large corporations at the expense of working people and allowed corporate executives to game the system for their own gain. We need elected leaders who will put people over profits and hold CEOs accountable. That’s why the AFL-CIO and the labor movement are mobilizing across the country to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in November,” Redmond said.
AFSCME’s International Executive Board unanimously voted to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris on July 22 after President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy. Walz, currently Minnesota’s governor, addressedAFSCME’s 46th International Convention in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Some of the 2024 AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch Report’s findings:
- Corporations raised prices on consumers even though their commodity costs went down, boosting corporate profits and CEO pay.
- Corporations across industries raised prices while giving their CEOs a raise, like ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson and Starbucks.
- While the average CEO of an S&P 500 company received 268 times their median employee’s total compensation, several corporate CEOs made thousands of times more than what their employees made, including Abercrombie & Fitch (CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 6,076-to-1), Mattel (3,620-to-1), and AMC Entertainment Holdings (2,201-to-1).
- Instead of investing in their workers, S&P 500 stock buybacks further boosted the reported profits for shareholders and corporate executives; S&P 500 companies repurchased $795 billion in shares in 2023.