If one of your fantasies is having a semi truck up to your house and throwing a huge mountain of cash on your front yard, consider becoming the CEO of a large company. Recent data released by the AFL-CIO was on CEO salaries from 2020-2021, comparing them to the median salaries of employees working in the same company – and the differences are appalling.
The AFL-CIO is a union-friendly lobby, so their motivation behind compiling this data is definitely worker-friendly. But even so, the result is pretty monstrous. While the numbers vary across industry sectors, some aggregate calculations show that S&P 500 CEOs earned an average of $ 15.5 million last year, more than 300 times the pay scale of their own employees.
According to the data, the biggest void is in the consumer discretionary sector, which includes Amazon’s retailers, Nike and McDonald’s. On average, CEO salaries in this sector were 741 times higher than the average worker. Consumer staples rank second on the list, with just over half the backlog in consumer staples, with CEOs making an average of 383 times more than their average employee. In case you’re wondering, the consumer discretionary sector includes companies that sell non-essentials (like a huge amount of what Amazon does, sneakers, or Big Macs). Consumer staples refers to everyday necessities, the category that S&P analysts Proctor & Gamble and Coca-Cola have delegated to. Personally, I don’t need a coke every day, but maybe I’m weird.
Healthcare was also a culprit in CEO-to-median employee-to-pay ratio, but it had the lowest number in the top 5, with its CEOs bringing in only 253 times their average employee. And when it comes to technology, communications services and information technology made the top five with a ratio of 334: 1 and 315: 1, respectively. But that doesn’t quite let tech companies off the hook when it comes to CEO’s wage sin.
Headquartered in Dublin, Aptiv Plc had the second highest wage gap of any S&P 500 company, with its no doubt grinning CEO Kevin Clark who grossed $ 31,267,329 in 2020 – 5,294 times what its average worker made in the same year. Only Abercrombie & Fitch had a bigger gap with 6,565: 1.
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The third largest void was also a technology company, namely Western Digital. Its CEO, David Goeckeler, raised $ 35,723,376 in 2020, which is 4,934 times higher than his average employee. In contrast, Tim Cook’s Apple Comp of $ 14,769,259 and Satya Nadella’s $ 44,321,788 income from Microsoft only placed them at 256: 1 and 257: 1, respectively.
Do CEOs really work hard enough to make those sky-high salaries? I suppose it depends on how you define the words “earn” and “work”. But on the flip side, someone has to keep the superyacht industry in business.
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