America's CEOs Now Make 303 Times More Than Their Workers

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/ceo-compensation-income-gap-epi-report-2014

By Jaeah Lee | Mon Jun. 22, 2015

The US economy is rebounding for the nation's top income earners but not for everyone else, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. The study, published Sunday, finds that chief executives at the country's 350 biggest firms earned an average of $16.3 million (16,300,000) in 2014, marking a 54.3 percent increase since 2009. Meanwhile, compensation for typical workers in the same industries as those CEOs fell 1.7 percent over the same time period.

"Those at the top of the income distribution, including many CEOs, are seeing a strong recovery, while the typical worker is still experiencing the detrimental effects of a stagnant labor market," the study's authors, Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis, found.

The pay gap between CEOs and the typical worker has widened since 2009, with CEOs now making more than 303 times the earnings of workers in their industries. CEOs have made at least 120 times the earnings of typical workers since 1995. In 2014, Mishel and Davis note, CEOs also made 5.84 times more than others in the top 0.1 percent of wage earners. "As CEO pay has escalated," the authors found, "it's directly contributed to growing income inequality by [fueling] the growth of the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent."

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