S&P 500 chief executives made $16.7 million on average in 2022, 272 times the pay of their median workers, a new study showed on Thursday, a decline on both measures over the prior year as CEO compensation fell with poor stock returns.
Average CEO pay fell from $18.3 million and 324 times median worker earnings in 2021 for companies in the same index. Poorer stock performance accounted for much of the decline in CEO pay in 2022 because their compensation is often tied partly to investor returns. "CEO pay fell more than worker pay but didn’t fall enough to make it fair or equal," said study author Brandon Rees, the labor federation's deputy director of corporations and capital markets."This is an impossible level of compensation for an individual person to receive in just one year," he said.