It would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what S&P 500 index chief executive officers earn in just one year, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO.
CEOs in the S&P 500 made about $17.7 million on average in 2023, according to the latest edition of the federation of labor unions’s “Paywatch” report. That’s more than 268 times the median worker’s income at those companies, according to the AFL-CIO, which reviewed compensation data for executives at 3,000 companies, including those in the S&P 500.
Over the past decade, the average pay of an S&P 500 CEO has increased by $4.2 million. From 2022 to 2023 alone, compensation for CEOs grew 6%.
For the median employee of any of the companies in the S&P 500, they would need to have started working in 1755 to earn $17.7 million. That would require them to be born not only before the American Revolution and the U.S.’s founding, but in the same year that French Queen Marie Antoinette and future Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton were born. That’s roughly 269 years ago.
“Years of poor policy decisions have favored large corporations at the expense of working people and allowed corporate executives to game the system for their own gain,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said in a statement, as he reiterated the union’s support for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
However, not all executives are paid equally.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora were the top-paid CEOs in the S&P 500, with respective compensation of $161.8 million and $151.4 million. For now, the least-paid CEOs in the S&P 500 were Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang, as their compensation is tied to their companies’ performance. Musk’s $56 billion compensation package is currently embroiled in the courts, with a decision expected later this year.
Beyond the S&P 500, TPG Capital CEO Jon Winkelried and Carlyle Group CEO Harvey Schwartz made $198.6 million and $186.9 million in 2023, respectively. They were the best-paid CEOs in America last year.
The AFL-CIO also broke down how long it would take workers at a handful of specific companies to earn the equivalent of their chief executive’s pay. For a worker at Nu Skin Enterprises to earn CEO Ryan Napierski’s $5.8 million compensation, they would have to start working in 8,354 B.C. Abercrombie & Fitch workers would need to clock into work in 4,053 B.C. to make CEO Fran Horowitz’s $15 million compensation.