Thursday, April 19, 2012

CEO pay is 380 times average worker pay

Yup, CEOs at the largest U.S. companies earned an average of $12.9 million a year, 380 times the wage of the average worker last year.

That's according to the AFL-CIO, which renamed its annual "Executive PayWatch" site as "CEO Pay and the 99%."

Reports CNN Money,

The data are searchable on the website paywatch.org, which is run by the union group. The site will eventually post CEO pay for all 500 companies as that data is released in proxies submitted to the SEC.
In 1980, CEOs at the largest companies received 42 times the pay of the average worker, according to the union. In 2000 the gap hit a high, with CEOs making 525 times the average worker.In 2010, the gap narrowed, with CEOs making 343 times the average worker.
And as we're all painfully aware, median pay for workers is actually falling.

It matters. A lot. Not just to workers who have to take pay cuts so CEOs can loot the companies they've been entrusted to manage. It's bad for investors (which include pension funds). As Robert Reich wrote,
Institutional investors are catching on to a truth they should have understood years ago: When executive pay goes through the roof, there’s less money left for everyone else who owns shares of the company.