America’s top CEOs make 285 times as much as the average worker at their company. That’s according to the latest annual Executive Paywatch report from the national AFL-CIO. And it’s up from 268 to 1 the previous year.
The report tallies the CEO-to-worker disclosures that companies are required to file if their stock is publicly traded on U.S. stock exchanges; that’s more than 3,800 corporations in all. The 285-to-1 figure comes from the largest 500 of those, companies that are included in the S&P 500 stock index. Together those companies account for 80% of the total market value of publicly traded companies.
According to the report, 2024 was a good year for the CEO class: CEOs in the S&P 500 took home $18.9 million in total compensation on average — a 7% pay raise from the previous year.
Of all 500, Starbucks had the greatest disparity between its CEO and its average worker. Brian Niccol received $97,813,843 in total compensation, 6,666 times more than the median Starbucks employee. Bear that in mind as you wonder why Starbucks still doesn’t have a union contract 43 months and hundreds of labor law violations after the first Starbucks stores started unionizing in 2021.
Companies headquartered in Oregon and Washington had some of nation’s most lavish CEO pay last year. Oregon had just 10 publicly traded companies. Here’s what their CEOs took home:
- Lattice Semiconductor Ford Tamer $69,154,980
- KinderCare Learning Companies Tom Wyatt $58,971,059
- NIKE John Donahoe II $29,184,701
- Lithia Motors Bryan DeBoer $16,795,702
- Portland General Electric Maria Pope $7,367,025
- Greenbrier Companies Lorie Tekorius $6,500,650
- Dutch Bros Christine Barone $4,968,400
- Radius Recycling Tamara Lundgren $4,912,875
- Northwest Natural David Anderson $4,137,585
- NuScale Power John Hopkins $3,428,071
Two of those are union employers. PGE paid its CEO 45 times what it paid its average worker, and the ratio was 32 to 1 at Northwest Natural. Those were egalitarian utopias next to the 1,298-to-1 ratio at Lattice and the 759-to-1 ratio at Nike.
Washington’s top-paid CEO list was led by Starbucks, of course, followed by Microsoft ($79,106,183), T-Mobile ($30,040,245), and Expedia ($24,934,592). But the list also had some longtime union employers: Weyerhaeuser CEO Devin Stockfish (#9 in Washington) took home $12,952,945; CostCo’s Ron Vachris (#11) got $12,229,741; and Alaska Air’s Ben Minicucci (#18), was paid $8,645,983.
Among the seven exchange-traded corporations headquartered in Idaho, Micron led the list for highest pay and most unequal, paying CEO Sanjay Mehrotra $30,060,126 — 469 times the average worker. Union employer Boise Cascade was the third highest paid at $7.5 million, 114 times its average employee.
MORE: View the full report and searchable database at paywatch.org.
