CEOs earn 614 times more than workers at US’s 100 lowest-paying corporations

The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).IPS’s latest Executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%.Inflation also outpaced worker pay increases, rising by 25.9%.CEO to worker pay ratio at the low-wage 100 firms increased 8.4% between 2019 and 2025.The average CEO compensation among low-wage 100 corporations was $17.5m in 2025, compared to median worker pay of $36,571.The wealth of at least 36 billionaires is linked to these low-wage 100 corporations, including Walmart’s eight Walton family members, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott, and Carvana co-founders Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III.“This is really a big problem for society, that we have such extremes,” said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the report and director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.“To me, it seems like these CEOs are just living on a remote economic planet from the one that their employees are living on, and it makes it really hard for them to fathom what it’s like to have to worry about putting food on your family’s table or even coming home at night if you are at risk of being detained by ICE.”The report notes that the low-wage 100 corporations have a combined force of 1,282 registered federal lobbyists and that many of these companies did not denounce aggressive immigration enforcement actions toward their workforce or on their property.“Low-wage workers are now facing the biggest cuts to Medicaid and Snap [food benefits] in history. Many of the employees at these companies have to rely on those programs, and then so many of them have also been terrorized and detained by ICE agents,” added Anderson. “So it’s really astounding that the leaders of these companies have turned a blind eye to this surge of threats against many of their workers, and instead they’ve just continue to be fixated on enriching themselves.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStock buybacks among these firms increased in 2025, to $108.6bn from $105bn in 2024. Between 2019 and 2025, the low-wage 100 firms spent $718bn on stock buybacks.Among the 100 low-wage firms, Walmart spent the most on stock buybacks, at $8.1bn, equivalent to a $3,851 bonus to each of the company’s 2.1 million workers. Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillan, who stepped down in January 2026, received $29.2m in compensation in 2025, 958 times more than the median worker pay at Walmart of $30,520.The report cites several policy solutions to excessive executive pay at corporations, including a tax hike on corporations that pay CEOs more than 50 times what they pay their median employees, an increase on stock buyback taxes and leveraging government contracts and subsidies to bar contractors from engaging in stock buybacks.Walmart did not respond to multiple requests for comment.