Despite Gains, CEO to Worker Pay Gap Grows for Many

With multiple strikes, headline-grabbing unionization efforts, and reports of workers quitting due to low pay and poor working conditions, 2021 seemed like the “year of the worker.” But at the country’s largest low-wage employers, that trend of labor action didn’t translate into better worker pay.

At the 300 publicly held U.S. corporations with the lowest median wages, the gap between what CEOs and median-wage workers earn has grown to a ratio of 670-to-1, according to a new report—up from 604-to-1 in 2020.

That’s just the average gap; the ratio at 49 of those 300 companies is larger than 1,000-to-1, according to the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies, which released its annual Executive Excess report on Tuesday.