Good morning. Thank you all for joining us as we launch this year’s Executive Paywatch report.
The AFL-CIO has been tracking CEO pay on our Executive Paywatch website since 1997. You can find the report at www.paywatch.org.
It’s a huge team effort and before we get into the numbers, I’d like to thank Brandon Rees, the AFL-CIO’s Deputy Director of Corporations and Capital Markets, for his work on this important project.
Each year, we highlight the impact runaway executive pay has on workers and our economy. Two years ago, we described the record-breaking pay packages CEOs received in 2021 as “greedflation” as executives hoarded profits for themselves and their shareholders while the nation emerged from the pandemic.
The CEO pay inflation trend continues. Last year, the CEO pay packages climbed to the second-highest level in Paywatch history.
In 2023, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received an average of $17.7 million in total compensation—a 6 percent increase over the previous year.
The average CEO of an S&P 500 company received 268 times their median employee’s total compensation.
To help put that into context: today’s typical worker would have had to start working before the American Revolution in 1776 to earn what the average CEO made last year.
That’s the span of 5 career lifetimes…and that’s just on average.
There are some companies with truly historic—and horrifying—pay ratios.
Consider the company with the highest disclosed CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2023. The median employee of Nu Skin Enterprises would have had to start working more than 10,000 years ago—in 8,000 BC—to earn what their CEO received last year.
It’s hard to imagine.
Especially when in 1965—according to research by the Economic Policy Institute—the typical CEO of a large company received just 15 times the average worker’s pay.
How did this level of income inequality come to pass? How did we get to 268-to-1 from 15-to-1 in just 60 years?
Years of poor policy decisions that have favored large corporations over working people, and allow corporate executives to game the system for their own gain.
For example, in his first year in office, President Trump and the Republican Congress passed a massive tax cut for corporations and billionaires. They said it would create good jobs and raise pay for workers. We’ve heard that promise over and over again and it’s been empty each and every time.
90 percent of workers didn’t see an increase in wages or any residual economic benefit…but corporations and their top executives did.
Instead of investing in research and development, capital expenditures or their own employees, CEOs have been using this corporate tax windfall to boost short-term stock prices through stock buybacks.
And more and more executives are using the bump in stock prices to sell their own shares after a buyback announcement, so CEO pay becomes even more inflated. In 2023, CEO pay was also boosted by $795 billion in stock buybacks by S&P 500 companies. (That’s billion with a B.)
This level of inequality is not sustainable, yet Trump told his wealthy donors that he wants to cut the corporate tax rate even further if he is reelected. It’s no wonder Elon Musk, the world’s richest CEO, has endorsed Trump.
And it’s no wonder that working people are upset that corporate profits and stock prices surge while our wages have not kept up with inflation.
Working people are upset that prices remain so high even as costs appear to have come down. Last year, producer commodity prices fell 3 percent yet consumer prices rose 3 percent.
So working people have to wonder if major corporations have too much market power to set prices for consumers.
Especially when they see the CEO pay of consumer facing companies have gone up along with increased consumer prices at companies like Charter Communications…Delta Air Lines…Exxon Mobil…Starbucks and many more.
High pay disparities are bad for workers, consumers, companies and our economy.
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.
So how do we stop rising inequality and restore balance to our economy?
By electing more leaders who put people over profits.
Elections have consequences, and we need to elect a president who will enforce our nation’s antitrust and consumer protection laws to limit price gouging by companies.
We need a president who will support working people’s freedom to form unions and negotiate for wages that keep up with rising prices.
We need a president who is on the side of working people.
Kamala Harris will be that president. She is the clear choice. That’s why the AFL-CIO endorsed her…why we will be advocating for her and other pro-worker candidates up and down the ballot…and why we are encouraging people to exercise their right to vote.
Visitors to the Executive Paywatch site can learn more about the economic policies of the candidates and check their voter registration status.
We’re also encouraging visitors to the site to contact their Congressional representatives to adopt sensible tax policies, such as taxing large companies whose CEO-to-worker pay ratio exceeds 50-to-1.
Closing loopholes, unwinding Trump’s corporate tax giveaway and making big corporations pay their fair share are a few of the real solutions to fix CEO “payflation” and restore balance to our economy.
Now I’d like to turn it over to Brandon Rees, who will walk us through the rest of this year’s Executive Paywatch website.
Thank you.
