A new report issued by the Economic Policy Institute has tracked CEO pay back to 1978 and says that the average chief executive’s pay has grown 1,322% in that time period. And while that’s certainly a long span of time — more than 40 years — the average worker’s pay has grown a mere 18 percent during that same time period.
This means the average CEO makes $351 for every dollar the average worker does… and though a recent report in Forbes says wealth increased for the ultra-wealthy to the tune of $5 trillion during the pandemic, EPI points out that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio isn’t even the highest it’s ever been. That happened in 2000, when it was 366-to-1.
Manufacturing.net
August 13, 2021
An August report from progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute found that corporate boards have awarded America’s top executives compensation packages that radically outpace stock market growth and worker pay, while the nation’s federally set hourly minimum wage has remained at $7.25 for more than a decade.
The Independent
August 13, 2021
Twenty-five other states increased their minimum wage on Jan. 1, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. The current highest rate is $15.20 an hour, in the District of Columbia, although some states have adopted annual indexing that increases their rates automatically each year.
Associated Press
August 13, 2021
These outsize compensation packages have grown faster than the stock market, and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1 per cent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with,” write authors Lawrence Mishell, a distinguished fellow, and research assistant Jori Kandra.
“CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80 per cent) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills.”
During the same period, the pay of the typical worker increased 18 per cent.
The Independent (via Yahoo! News)
August 13, 2021
Meanwhile, inflation is erasing the buying power of those new raises. I talked to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and she says if this was a big change that’s giving workers a new kind of long-term power, wage growth would be much higher. And she worries over time, wages might simply get frozen again while prices continue rising.
NPR
August 13, 2021
While housing costs doubled or tripled, wages didn’t. Compensation rose 17.2% since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Sacramento Bee
August 13, 2021
“For the first time since the late 1990s, low-wage workers have a little more leverage to demand higher pay,” said David Cooper, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive Washington think tank.
AFP (via Yahoo! News)
August 13, 2021
A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020—a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.
In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options.
Common Dreams
August 13, 2021
The chief executives at major U.S. corporations received millions of dollars in bonuses or raises last year even as many companies saw slumping sales and job cuts because of the pandemic, a new analysis shows.
CEO compensation at the top 350 companies jumped nearly 19% in 2020 to an average $24.2 million, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. By comparison, pay for rank-and-file workers last year rose roughly 4%. The typical corporate leader at big companies in 2020 made $351 for every dollar earned by a typical employee, up from a ratio of 307-to-1 in 2019, according to EPI.
Economist Lawrence Mishel, who co-authored the report, said some companies touted reductions in pay for top executives to reflect the pandemic’s impact on business, but had little impact. “CEOs offering pay cuts during the pandemic yielded favorable headlines, but were symbolic at best and a head fake at worst,” he said in a statement.
CBS
August 13, 2021
If all these workers were taken into account, July’s unemployment rate would be 8.1% instead of the reported 5.4%, according to Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
August 13, 2021