CEO Pay Jumped 16% During Pandemic, While Average Worker Pay Rose 1.8%

From the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epi.org/):

Last year required many of us to make personal sacrifices. EPI research into preliminary data shows this sacrifice did not extend to many of America’s CEOs.

Our researchers reviewed data from 281 large firms filing information on CEO compensation through the end of April. What EPI found: CEO pay jumped nearly 16% in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, while average worker compensation rose 1.8%.

This contrast in pay between executives and workers isn’t new, but it’s doubly outrageous that so many in the nation’s corner offices enjoyed a windfall during the pandemic while so many struggled economically. The new findings show that the offers made by CEOs to forgo salary increases during the pandemic were largely symbolic. Salaries were stable, but many CEOs pocketed a windfall by cashing in stock options and obtaining vested stock awards, compounding income inequalities laid bare during the past year.

Please take a moment to share this graphic with your friends and family and encourage them to read EPI’s latest CEO pay analysis.

While the growth of CEO pay was far from uniform—some benefitted from a much greater increase in compensation than others—this analysis shows that the stock market growth in 2020 contributed to a major leap forward in CEO compensation, compounding the income and wealth inequalities that have emerged in the pandemic. There are also examples of firms making “discretionary adjustments” to their compensation schemes to shield CEOs from “the pandemic’s adverse impact on the company’s financial results.” Such adjustments, of course, were not made for rank-and-file workers.