Golden Data

Data story · executive pay

How far CEO pay pulled away

In 1965 the boss of a big U.S. company made about 21 times what a typical worker made — a gap you could almost picture. Today it’s measured in the hundreds-to-one, and it swings with the stock market, because executive pay is mostly stock.

Jun 28, 20262 sources

The ratio peaked at 408 : 1 in 2021 — the average big-company CEO out-earned a typical worker by that much in a single year. It was 21 : 1 in 1965, and still 280 : 1 in 2024.

CEO-to-worker compensation ratio (options-realized) at the 350 largest U.S. firms, 1965–2024. CEO pay is mostly stock, so the ratio swings with the market — the 2021 high and the earlier dot-com spike both line up with the S&P 500.

CEO-to-worker pay ratioS&P 500 (right axis)— options-realized, top 350 U.S. firms

Data: EPI State of Working America Data Library (CEO-to-worker pay ratio, realized), the authoritative source behind EPI’s published CEO-pay reports; S&P 500 from Robert Shiller. Feed: public/data/pay-gap-ratio.csv, built by scripts/build-pay-gap.mjs. View the original on Tableau Public →

What does your CEO make?

The chart above is the market-wide average. This makes it personal — search a company you know and see its own CEO-to-median-worker gap, straight from the SEC proxy every public company has to file.

Starbucks

Brian Niccol · CEO · FY2024

6,666:1CEO-to-worker

Starbucks’s median worker would need 6,666 years to earn what Niccol made in one.

CEO pay$97.8M$97,813,843
Median worker$15K$14,674
Starbucks6,666:1
S&P 500 average285:1

That’s 23.4× the typical big-company gap (the S&P 500 averages ~285:1). #1 of 16 companies here. Source: FY2024 proxy →

NoteNiccol's first-year pay is annualized for his partial-year start (per SEC rules); the disclosed ratio uses the $97.8M annualized figure.

Figures are each company’s own SEC-disclosed CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio (required in proxy statements since 2018). For the 60-year trend behind the average, see How far CEO pay pulled away →