Pay gap between CEOs and workers by country 2018 | Statista (2024)

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Pay gap between CEOs and workers by country 2018 | Statista? ›

Pay gap between CEOs and average workers, by country 2018

A widening CEO-to-worker pay gap

In 2022, CEOs made roughly 185 times their typical worker; with the jump in 2023 numbers, CEOs now make roughly 196 times their employees.

Average CEO Pay Is Growing, Fueling Economic Inequality

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 268-to-1 for S&P 500 Index companies in 2023. It would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what CEOs receive in just one year.

CEO pay vs workers

Half the CEOs in this year's pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned. That's up from 185 times in last year's survey.

The major reason U.S. CEO pay appears higher is that U.S. firms tend to have higher institutional ownership and more-independent boards, which increase the risk of performance-related terminations, Matos says. Controlling for these variables nearly eliminates the pay gap, he says.

Why are CEOs paid high salaries? One key factor that fueled the surge in CEO salaries is the shift towards shareholder capitalism. In the late 20th century, there was a growing emphasis on maximizing shareholder value, which led to a change in the way CEOs were compensated.

The bulk of Kempczinski's pay package came in the form of stock and option awards, which total about $13 million. He was paid a base salary of $1.4 million and received just over $4 million in incentive compensation—the bonus was about $200,000 less than he received in 2022.

The United States topped the list in 2018 for the country with the highest gap between CEO and worker pay.

On April 13, 2015, with reporters from The New York Times and NBC News in attendance, Price told Gravity Payments staff that he was raising the company's minimum salary to $70,000 and reducing his own compensation from $1.1 million to $70,000. The story quickly went viral.

Why do CEOs pay themselves $1? ›

Later, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many business executives began accepting one-dollar salaries—often in the case of struggling companies or startups—with the potential for further indirect earnings as the result of their ownership of stock. Many choose to reduce their salary so they can avoid income taxes.

There are serious problems with CEO compensation, but “excessive” pay is not the biggest issue. The relentless focus on how much CEOs are paid diverts public attention from the real problem—how CEOs are paid. In most publicly held companies, the compensation of top executives is virtually independent of performance.

The highest-paid CEO in the study is Jon Winkelried of TPG, Inc., whose total disclosed pay package was $198.7 million in 2023. The five highest-paid CEOs were each awarded a nine-figure pay package in 2023.

If your life's goal is to be a highly paid chief executive officer, the U.S. is the place. But if your dream is just to be richer than society, South Africa and India are great bets too. In either case, probably best to avoid Thailand, Poland and China.

In 2022, the ratio between CEO compensation at S&P 500 firms and average U.S. worker pay stood at 272-to-1, according to AFL-CIO analysis.

For instance, according to a 2023 report, CEOs of large public companies earned an average salary of $1.6 million in 2023, while those at midsize firms averaged about $890,000, and CEOs of smaller private companies earned an average of around $630,000.

CEOs are always on, and there is always more to be done. The leaders in our study worked 9.7 hours per weekday, on average. They also conducted business on 79% of weekend days, putting in an average of 3.9 hours daily, and on 70% of vacation days, averaging 2.4 hours daily.

When compared to the pay of average workers, the increase is even more dramatic: In 1992, CEOs were paid 82 times the average of blue-collar workers; in 2004, they were paid more than 400 times those salaries. “Barry Bonds makes a lot of money because he's a great baseball player.