CEO pay at US’s largest companies up 54% since recovery began in 2009
Psst … want to earn a CEO’s hourly wage? You can. You’ll just have to toil for about five weeks to do it, without a single day off.
According to the latest annual survey by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, CEOs at the 350 largest companies in the country pocketed an average of $16.3m in compensation each last year. That’s up 3.9% from 2013, and a whopping gain of 54.3% since the recovery began in 2009.
The average annual earnings of employees at those companies? Well, that was only $53,200. And in 2009, when the recovery began? Well, that was $53,200, too. In other words, while the CEOs have seen their compensation soar by 54%, the typical worker’s paycheck hasn’t budged.
You’d expect to see a gap between the earnings of the guy who is responsible for running the business and those that work there, of course; that would just reflect the greater burden on the former for keeping the whole show on the road (and the fact that if he doesn’t, his tenure can end very rapidly). Then, too, a CEO often is either a senior industry executive with considerable experience or, in the case of a smaller business or startup, its founder, who has put his own capital and reputation on the line to get the company going and keep it afloat.
But it’s the size of the gap that is the real problem, especially when set against the stagnation of employee salaries.
more
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/25/ceo-pay-america-up-average-employees-salary-down
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