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CEO pay is on the rise in 2025, and the pace of growth is leaving the average worker far behind, according to a new report.<\/p>\n
The leaders of some of the world\u2019s biggest companies got an 11% pay bump last year, while the average worker globally got a measly 0.5% increase. That means CEO pay grew roughly 20 times faster than that of the average worker, according to a Friday study published by the International Trade Union Confederation and Oxfam.<\/p>\n
The report, which looked at 1,500 companies across 33 countries, found that the average CEO was paid about $8.4 million last year, up from an average of $5.5 million in 2019.<\/p>\n
The poster child of high executive pay, though, may be Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In November, shareholders approved a pay package for the world\u2019s richest man that could award him up to $1 trillion worth of stock over 10 years if he meets certain growth goals, including a requirement to grow Tesla\u2019s market cap to $8.5 trillion, an increase of about 585%. The record-breaking pay package was valued at $158 billion in 2025, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n Billionaires did incredibly well last year, thanks in part to solid stock market gains in 2025. The S&P 500 increased by just under 18% in 2025. Nearly 1,000 billionaires whose investment portfolios were identified earned $79 billion in dividends last year, according to the report.<\/p>\n To be sure, the study compared the pay of 1,500 CEOs from \u201ctop-paying corporations\u201d against the wages of all the workers in the world, conflating two seemingly unrelated groups. A fairer comparison could be measuring CEO pay against worker pay within those same companies, as commenters on the Economics subreddit pointed out.<\/p>\n The leap in CEO pay comes as wages for the average worker have plummeted. Global real wages for workers fell by 12% between 2019 and 2025. The report claims that given this decrease in wages, the average worker has worked 108 days for free since 2019.<\/p>\n Apart from falling wages, the average worker has had to deal with skyrocketing inflation in recent years. Core inflation saw an uptick of 0.3% and was 3.2% higher in March than a year earlier, according to the core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes volatile categories like food and energy. Since 2020, overall prices are up 25%, according to data from the consumer price index.<\/p>\n Federal Reserve data show that the wealth gap in the U.S. is growing. As of the third quarter of 2025, the top 1% of American households owned about 29% of the country\u2019s wealth, compared to 5.3% owned by the bottom 50%.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n To remedy this disparity, the government should take corrective action, Amitabh Behar, the executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernments must cap CEO pay, fairly tax the super-rich, and ensure minimum wages at the very least keep pace with inflation and ensure a dignified living,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n