'The System is Rigged': CEOs Made 285 Times More Than Their Workers in 2024: AFL-CIO Report

The staggering inequality between bosses and workers only continued to grow last year, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO on executive pay.

The union's latest "Executive Paywatch" report, which uses data from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to track the pay disparities between CEOs and the employees that work for them, found that the average S&P 500 executive made an eye-popping 285 times more than their median worker did, up from a 268-to-1 ratio in 2023.

CEOs received a $1.4 million raise last year, the data shows, bringing their average yearly compensation up to $18.9 million, a 7% increase. The median worker, meanwhile, made just $49,500, marking just a 3% increase from the year before.

In order to make the same amount as their boss made in a single year, the report noted that the typical employee would need to have begun working in 1740—"Before the AMERICAN REVOLUTION," the union noted on X.

By far the widest disparity was at Starbucks, where CEO Brian Niccol—who took over the company last year—brought home 6,666 times as much as his median employee.

In 2024, while the average Starbucks employee took home less than $15,000, Niccol received a compensation package, primarily made up of company stock, worth nearly $98 million.

For more than three years, Starbucks has waged what New York Times columnist Megan Stack called a "dirty war" against its employees' attempts to unionize.

The company has fired union organizers and pro-union workers, cut their hours to deny them healthcare coverage, shut down unionized stores, and subjected employees to aggressive anti-union "captive audience" meetings.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that Starbucks has likely had more complaints of illegal union-busting filed against it than any other company in the National Labor Relations Board's 90-year history.

In response to the AFL-CIO's new report, the X account for Starbucks Workers United wrote: "When Starbucks and CEO Brian Niccol tries to tell us they can't afford fair union contracts... remember this."

Starbucks is merely the most glaring example of the inequality highlighted in the report: Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ross Stores, Yum! Brands, Chipotle, and many other flagship American companies paid their CEOs more than 1,000 times as much as their median workers.

These disparities are projected to get even larger following the passage of President Donald Trump's recent budget legislation, which guts social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps in order to pay for gigantic new tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

It has been described by some economic analysts as the "largest transfer of wealth in history."

According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, the incomes of the top 0.1% wealthiest households will increase by more than $83,000 on average by 2033, while the incomes of the poorest 40% will decline.

"Corporate CEOs are raking in millions, and now they'll get another kickback from President Trump's tax cut gift and anti-worker agenda," said Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

The average marginal tax rate paid by these executives, the report found, will decrease by nearly $500,000 a year. In all, the CEOs in the report will be able to avoid paying an extra $738 million in income taxes thanks to the bill.

That lost tax revenue, the report found, could have paid for Medicaid healthcare coverage for more than 80,000 people, SNAP food assistance for over 300,000, or school lunches for more than 900,000 students.

The report notes that many of the CEOs and companies that are expected to profit royally from the bill gave large donations to Trump's inauguration, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.

"Is it any wonder," asked former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, "so many people think the system is rigged?"