The AFL-CIO dropped its annual number this week: 312. That’s how many times the average S&P 500 CEO out-earned the median American worker last year. It was 285 the year before. Average package: $22.8 million. Average worker: $73,000. One of these people sat in meetings. The other one did the work those meetings were about. CEO pay went up 21% in a single year while the people who generate the revenue got whatever their annual review felt like giving them.
Then there’s Musk, who broke the spreadsheet entirely. His Tesla comp package was $158 billion — fourteen times the total pay of every other S&P 500 CEO combined. All 499 of them could pool their checks and his pile would still be fourteen of theirs. A court blocked it. He got it anyway. Tesla’s board called it alignment of incentives. The incentive, apparently, is to never stop.
Nobody stocking shelves or driving trucks or teaching kids got 21% richer last year. The ratio moved 27 points in twelve months. None of these people got 27 points better at running a company. In the sixties it was 20 to 1. Now it’s 312 and the only people who track the number work at the AFL-CIO. That’s not a gap. Gaps have two sides trying to close them.