Last year, the compensation disparity between CEOs and workers at some of the US corporations with the lowest-paid employees widened even more, with CEOs earning an average of $10.6 million compared to $23,968 for the median worker.
According to a survey by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) of 300 top US corporations, the average pay disparity between CEOs and median workers has increased to 670-to-1.
In other words, for every $1 earned by a worker, the average CEO received $670 in remuneration.
In 2020, the ratio was 604-to-1, up from 604-to-1 in the previous year. There were 49 companies with ratios greater than 1,000-to-1.
IPS discovered that median worker pay did not keep pace with inflation at more than a third of the enterprises surveyed.
The research, dubbed Executive Excess, comes amid a wave of low-wage worker unionization drives and increased scrutiny of large share buyback plans used by many firms to inflate their stock prices.