Amid growing concern over income inequality, the most senior corporate officers in the United States made over 300 times as much as the average worker last year, according to a new report released Monday.
US chief executive officers (CEO) earned 303 times more than a “typical” worker in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, DC.
The report found that average CEO compensation for the largest firms was $16.3 million in 2014, an increase of 3.9 percent from last year and 54.3 percent since the end of the Great Recession in 2009.
This compared to the average industrial worker that is still experiencing stagnant wages and a labor market that has seen wages drop by an average of 1.7 per cent since 2009.
CEO compensation in 2013 was also nearly six times higher than others in the top 0.1 percent of earners, according to the study.
The report said CEO compensation growth did not reflect greater productivity for executives or a higher skill set, but “the power of CEOs to extract concessions.”