The looming SpaceX IPO has drawn renewed consideration to the astronomical pay that Elon Musk has secured via his corporations.
Final yr, Tesla shareholders approved a compensation package for Musk that might ultimately be price $1 trillion, if the corporate reaches sure milestones over the subsequent decade; in 2025, his pay was valued at over $158 billion. One other lavish pay bundle at SpaceX might reportedly be worth about $760 billion, assuming Musk can obtain some terribly lofty objectives.
Musk could be the most excessive instance of inflated CEO compensation, however a few of his friends will not be too far behind.
A new analysis by the Related Press and Equilar displays how CEO pay has soared, climbing increased yr after yr, at the same time as wages have stagnated for the common employee. In 2025, median compensation for CEOs within the S&P 500 reached $17.7 million, a rise of virtually 6% yr over yr. Actually, the 5 highest-paid CEOs—which, along with Musk, embrace David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon—have been awarded compensation packages which can be price greater than $100 million.
In the meantime, common pay for staff was $89,744 in 2025, up 4.7% from the yr prior. Throughout half of the businesses surveyed, it might take the common worker 200 years to earn what their CEO earned in only one yr—a notable uptick from 192 years within the 2024 survey.
The biggest gaps have been often at corporations the place the CEO compensation bundle included vital inventory awards or staff had significantly low wages. (Inventory awards are sometimes the biggest 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 fast clip, far outpacing wage development throughout the employee class.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the common CEO earned 60 occasions the standard employee in 1989; by 2000, that ratio had jumped to 380:1. As of 2024, CEOs are paid 281 occasions as a lot as the common employee. Between 1978 and 2024—almost a half century—wages for the common 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 improve 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 increased 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 occasions that of the common worker.
Nonetheless, there may be little proof that these coverage modifications have made a dent in CEO pay, even when they’ve put a highlight on the difficulty. 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.
