The looming SpaceX IPO has drawn renewed consideration to the astronomical pay that Elon Musk has secured by his corporations.
Final 12 months, Tesla shareholders approved a compensation package for Musk that would finally be price $1 trillion, if the corporate reaches sure milestones over the following decade; in 2025, his pay was valued at over $158 billion. One other lavish pay bundle at SpaceX may reportedly be worth about $760 billion, assuming Musk can obtain some terribly lofty objectives.
Musk will be the most excessive instance of inflated CEO compensation, however a few of his friends usually are not too far behind.
A new analysis by the Related Press and Equilar displays how CEO pay has soared, climbing larger 12 months after 12 months, at the same time as wages have stagnated for the typical employee. In 2025, median compensation for CEOs within the S&P 500 reached $17.7 million, a rise of virtually 6% 12 months over 12 months. In reality, the 5 highest-paid CEOs—which, along with Musk, embrace David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon—had been awarded compensation packages which might be price greater than $100 million.
In the meantime, common pay for staff was $89,744 in 2025, up 4.7% from the 12 months prior. Throughout half of the businesses surveyed, it might take the typical worker 200 years to earn what their CEO earned in only one 12 months—a notable uptick from 192 years within the 2024 survey.
The most important gaps had been normally at corporations the place the CEO compensation bundle included vital inventory awards or staff had notably low wages. (Inventory awards are sometimes the most important element of pay packages for CEOs, which implies a lot of their compensation is tied to firm efficiency.)
During the last three a long time, govt compensation has elevated at a speedy clip, far outpacing wage progress throughout the employee class.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the typical CEO earned 60 instances the everyday employee in 1989; by 2000, that ratio had jumped to 380:1. As of 2024, CEOs are paid 281 instances as a lot as the typical employee. Between 1978 and 2024—practically a half century—wages for the typical employee have elevated by simply 26%. In that very same time interval, nonetheless, CEO pay has spiked by 1,094%.
As Quick Firm has reported, there have been rising efforts to curb CEO pay and enhance consciousness of govt compensation. Since 2018, the Securities and Change Fee has required that corporations disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios. Lawmakers have proposed imposing larger taxes on corporations whose pay ratios exceed 50:1. In San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, there are already legal guidelines in place supposed to cap CEO compensation, by levying taxes on employers if govt pay is greater than 100 instances that of the typical worker.
Nonetheless, there’s little proof that these coverage modifications have made a dent in CEO pay, even when they’ve put a highlight on the problem. And whereas Musk’s compensation packages could also be outliers—even amongst well-heeled CEOs—they do encapsulate how outsized govt pay has been normalized lately.
