CEO pay increased in 2024 and is now 281 times that of the typical worker: New EPI landing page has all the details
After two uncharacteristic years of decline in 2022 and 2023, the pay for chief executive officers (CEOs) of the 350 largest firms in the U.S. increased in 2024. As of the latest data available, realized compensation—which captures what CEOs took home in pay after any stock-based compensation was sold—averaged nearly 23 million dollars in 2024 at the 350 largest publicly traded firms, an increase of 5.9% since 2023.
EPI’s new CEO pay data page details the latest information on CEO pay, the sources of CEO pay, and how CEO pay compares with what typical workers are paid, the stock market, and the pay of other highly paid workers. The new web page also provides historical data on each measure as far back as 1965.
The data show that CEOs are paid much more today than they were in the mid-1990s and many times what they earned in the 1960s or 1970s. In fact, realized compensation for CEOs is now 1,094% higher than it was in 1978. Over the same period, the pay for typical workers only increased 26%. As a result, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio grew tremendously—nearly tenfold—from 31-to-1 in 1978 to 281-to-1 in 2024 (see Figure A).
CEOs paid 281 times as much as typical workers: CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, 1965–2024
| year | Realized CEO compensation | Granted CEO compensation |
|---|---|---|
| 1965 | 20.62 | 15.30 |
| 1966 | 21.85 | 16.21 |
| 1967 | 23.08 | 17.12 |
| 1968 | 24.31 | 18.03 |
| 1969 | 24.04 | 17.83 |
| 1970 | 23.76 | 17.63 |
| 1971 | 23.49 | 17.43 |
| 1972 | 23.22 | 17.23 |
| 1973 | 22.95 | 17.02 |
| 1974 | 24.51 | 18.18 |
| 1975 | 26.07 | 19.34 |
| 1976 | 27.63 | 20.49 |
| 1977 | 29.18 | 21.65 |
| 1978 | 30.74 | 22.80 |
| 1979 | 33.41 | 24.78 |
| 1980 | 36.08 | 26.76 |
| 1981 | 38.75 | 28.75 |
| 1982 | 41.42 | 30.73 |
| 1983 | 44.09 | 32.71 |
| 1984 | 46.76 | 34.69 |
| 1985 | 49.43 | 36.67 |
| 1986 | 52.10 | 38.65 |
| 1987 | 54.77 | 40.63 |
| 1988 | 57.44 | 42.61 |
| 1989 | 60.11 | 44.59 |
| 1990 | 75.64 | 56.11 |
| 1991 | 91.16 | 67.62 |
| 1992 | 106.69 | 79.14 |
| 1993 | 108.24 | 99.20 |
| 1994 | 87.58 | 117.85 |
| 1995 | 117.07 | 130.09 |
| 1996 | 150.00 | 176.33 |
| 1997 | 223.10 | 234.83 |
| 1998 | 304.24 | 301.50 |
| 1999 | 275.26 | 288.46 |
| 2000 | 379.63 | 393.08 |
| 2001 | 214.27 | 325.71 |
| 2002 | 186.16 | 234.92 |
| 2003 | 228.47 | 226.40 |
| 2004 | 261.83 | 231.92 |
| 2005 | 319.52 | 244.33 |
| 2006 | 322.41 | 237.31 |
| 2007 | 328.49 | 242.43 |
| 2008 | 200.03 | 218.26 |
| 2009 | 166.39 | 181.24 |
| 2010 | 209.95 | 204.10 |
| 2011 | 238.91 | 212.40 |
| 2012 | 363.43 | 205.70 |
| 2013 | 318.54 | 211.34 |
| 2014 | 320.26 | 221.00 |
| 2015 | 320.30 | 215.88 |
| 2016 | 269.28 | 219.43 |
| 2017 | 294.38 | 233.51 |
| 2018 | 284.37 | 228.79 |
| 2019 | 311.48 | 229.36 |
| 2020 | 356.22 | 212.73 |
| 2021 | 408.47 | 272.98 |
| 2022 | 361.29 | 226.00 |
| 2023 | 276.47 | 196.98 |
| 2024 | 280.72 | 212.57 |
Notes: Average annual compensation for CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms ranked by sales is measured in two ways. Both include salary, bonus, and long-term incentive payouts, but the “granted” measure includes the value of stock options and stock awards when they were granted, whereas the “realized” measure captures the value of stock-related components that accrues after options or stock awards are granted by including “stock options exercised” and “vested stock awards.” Projected value for 2024 is based on the percent change in CEO pay in the samples available in June 2023 and in August 2024 applied to the full-year 2023 value. “Typical worker” compensation is the average annual compensation (wages and benefits of a full-time, full-year worker) of production/nonsupervisory workers in the industries that the top 350 firms operate in.
Source: Authors’ analysis of data from Compustat’s ExecuComp database, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics data series, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis NIPA tables.
Our new analysis on the CEO pay data page illustrates how CEO pay and the CEO-to-worker pay ratio have skyrocketed no matter how you measure CEO pay. Using alternative measures—such as smoothing over three years, dropping outliers, and measuring at the median—the growth in CEO compensation continues to far outpace the growth in wages for typical workers. Our estimates suggest that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2024 ranges from 169-to-1 to 380-to-1, depending on how it’s measured. Even at “just” 169-to-1, the ratio of median CEO compensation to typical worker pay grew more than threefold since 1992, the earliest year that particular measure is available.
Stock-related components constitute a large and growing share of total CEO compensation. Stock-related pay (exercised stock options and vested stock awards) averaged $18.2 million in 2024 and accounted for 79% of average realized CEO compensation. However, as shown in Figure B, the composition of those stock-related components has been shifting away from the use of stock options and toward stock awards over time. This is a potentially promising development because stock awards may better align CEO pay to longer-term incentives. In 1992, stock options accounted for 85% of stock-related pay in realized CEO compensation. By 2024, stock options made up only 31%, with vested stock awards accounting for the rest.
Notable shift from stock options to stock awards: Share of stock-based compensation in stock options, 1992–2024
| year | Options, realized | Options, granted |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 84.6% | 71.9% |
| 1993 | 84.9% | 81.0% |
| 1994 | 64.2% | 83.2% |
| 1995 | 77.9% | 82.7% |
| 1996 | 82.3% | 87.0% |
| 1997 | 86.0% | 86.7% |
| 1998 | 68.1% | 65.9% |
| 1999 | 85.4% | 86.3% |
| 2000 | 87.3% | 87.3% |
| 2001 | 76.9% | 87.3% |
| 2002 | 67.6% | 78.7% |
| 2003 | 64.6% | 63.9% |
| 2004 | 69.1% | 63.2% |
| 2005 | 75.5% | 62.7% |
| 2006 | 72.1% | 50.4% |
| 2007 | 70.7% | 47.4% |
| 2008 | 59.2% | 43.5% |
| 2009 | 47.1% | 39.8% |
| 2010 | 50.5% | 37.6% |
| 2011 | 45.0% | 38.7% |
| 2012 | 38.6% | 30.9% |
| 2013 | 46.8% | 28.3% |
| 2014 | 44.9% | 24.1% |
| 2015 | 41.3% | 22.9% |
| 2016 | 40.4% | 24.5% |
| 2017 | 49.4% | 21.5% |
| 2018 | 41.5% | 21.2% |
| 2019 | 40.1% | 17.6% |
| 2020 | 52.0% | 20.4% |
| 2021 | 44.1% | 18.1% |
| 2022 | 38.9% | 14.7% |
| 2023 | 27.2% | 16.3% |
| 2024 | 31.1% | 12.3% |
Notes: Average annual compensation for CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms ranked by sales is measured in two ways. Both include salary, bonus, and long-term incentive payouts, but the “granted” measure includes the value of stock options and stock awards when they were granted, whereas the “realized” measure captures the value of stock-related components that accrues after options or stock awards are granted by including “stock options exercised” and “vested stock awards.” Projected value for 2024 is based on the percent change in CEO pay in the samples available in June 2023 and in August 2024 applied to the full-year 2023 value.
Source: Authors’ analysis of data from Compustat’s ExecuComp database.
While CEOs are clearly paid far more than the typical worker, CEO pay is excessive even relative to other extraordinarily privileged actors in the economy. Between 1965 and 1978, the ratio of CEO pay to top 0.1% wages averaged 2.6, so the average CEO at large firms was paid 2.6 times as much as the average top 0.1% earner (of which top CEOs are a part). This CEO-to-top-0.1% pay ratio has risen enormously in the past five decades. In 2023 (the last year available for the top 0.1% data series), this ratio was 7.5, meaning that CEOs were paid 7.5 times as much as even the most privileged 0.1% of workers in the economy. This is an extremely large change: It essentially means that the relative pay of CEOs increased by an amount equal to the total annual wages of nearly five of these very-high-wage earners. A one-point rise in the ratio is the equivalent of the average CEO earning an additional amount equal to that of the average earnings of someone in the top 0.1%.
EPI’s new CEO pay data page provides the underlying pay data for the pay of both CEOs and the average of top 0.1% in every year the data are available since 1965.
Rising CEO pay does not reflect a rising value of skills or contributions to firms’ productivity. What has changed over the years is CEOs’ use of their power to set their own pay. In economic terms, this means that CEO compensation reflects substantial “rents” (income in excess of actual productivity). This is concerning since the earning power of CEOs has been driving income growth at the very top—a key dynamic in the overall growth of inequality.
The silver lining in this otherwise unfortunate trend is that CEO pay can be curtailed without damaging economywide growth. Tax policy can reduce the incentives for executives to push for such high pay and higher tax rates on income derived from wealth-holding would allow policymakers to claw back some of the past outsized gains CEOs have made. Worker representatives on corporate boards, an increase in unionization, and requiring shareholder votes on top executives’ compensation can also serve to restrain such exorbitant pay.
Even modest changes in corporate governance that allow shareholders more power to restrain CEO pay can help: The pronounced shift in the composition of CEO pay away from stock options was almost certainly driven in large part by a 2006 decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board that the value of stock options needed to be reported to shareholders in public documents. Before that change, firms treated the options they granted to CEOs as essentially free, even as these options diluted the value of other shareholders’ wealth. This modest change—just requiring a reporting of the value of stock options—has led to a change in the composition of CEO pay that is useful on its own. And the sharp reduction in options grants since 2006 likely partially explains why CEO pay growth has been slower since then. In short, policy matters along many margins.
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