New report exposes the glaring disparity between CEO and worker pay
Compensation in the largest US-listed companies surged to its highest-ever level in 2025, a growth that the biggest labour federation in the country slammed as "shameful."
Executive compensation among S&P 500 CEOs rose to $22.8 million in 2025, according to a new Paywatch report from the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO).
This is equivalent to a 21% increase over the previous year, and still not counting the controversial $158.3 billion pay package by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
With Musk's compensation accounted for, the average S&P CEO pay explodes to a massive $340.1 million in annual salary, a 1,700% increase from 2024.
"As shown in our latest Paywatch report, executive compensation has reached a new, shameful high," said Fred Redmon, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, in a statement.
According to the Paywatch report, Welltower CEO Shankh Mitra followed Musk as the highest-paid executive among S&P 500 CEOs with a whopping pay of $821 million. Rounding out the top 10 include:
- Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner ($172 million)
- Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman ($125 million)
- Goldman Sachs Group CEO David Solomon ($118 million)
- Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora ($99.7 million)
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella ($96.4 million)
- Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser ($95.7 million)
- Wells Fargo & Company CEO Charles Scharf ($94.5 million)
- Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan ($92.9 million)
'Shameful' high in CEO pay
The surge in S&P 500 CEOs' pay comes in the wake of a growing pay gap with regular workers in the United States, according to the AFL-CIO, which represents more than 12.5 million workers.
The federation said S&P 500 CEOs made 312 times the wage of the median US worker, up from 285 times in 2024, even without Musk's huge pay in the computation.
Musk, who became the world's first trillionaire in 2026, has a total compensation in 2025 that was 2,522,203 times the median Tesla worker's pay.
US President Donald Trump also received a $2.2 billion in 2025, which is almost a 254% increase from what he got in 2024.
"The median US worker would need 43,154 years to earn what Trump made in his first year back in office," the AFL-CIO report read.
It pointed out that workers' share of US national income fell to its lowest level since World War II, with employees being left to rely on programmes like Medicaid and SNAP to make ends meet.
It also showed that 16% of adults cannot pay all their bills in full, 26% skipped medical care due to cost, 37% do not have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense, and 23% of renters fell behind on their rent in the past year.
"Working Americans are struggling to feed their kids and pay their electric bills," Redmond said.
"But there's a better economy we can build for working people. That's why the labour movement will continue to fight for every worker to have a union contract that begins to level the playing field and ensures they take home the share of the profit they create."
