Pay Gap Between CEO's, Workers Continues To Rise
By STAN CHOE
Posted: May. 25, 2016 8:00 am Updated: May. 25, 2016 5:25 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — CEOs at the biggest companies got a 4.5 percent pay raise last year. That's almost double the typical American worker's, and a lot more than investors earned from owning their stocks — a big fat zero.
The typical chief executive in the Standard & Poor's 500 index made $10.8 million, including bonuses, stock awards and other compensation, according to a study by executive data firm Equilar for The Associated Press. That's up from the median of $10.3 million the same group of CEOs made a year earlier.
The raise alone for median CEO pay last year, $468,449, is more than 10 times what the typical U.S. worker makes in a year. The median full-time worker earned $809 weekly in 2015, up from $791 in 2014.
"With inflation running at less than 2 percent, why?" asks Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
The answer is complicated. In some cases, CEOs got big stock or option packages after signing new employment contracts. In others, boards bumped up salaries to get closer to what their rivals pay. Some CEOs got larger bonuses for hitting profit goals or improving worker safety. CEO pay packages now hinge on multiple layers of sometimes esoteric measurements of performance. That's a result of corporate boards attempting to respond to years of criticism about excessiveness from Main Street America, regulators and even candidates on the presidential trail this year.
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