SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
U.S. CEOs average over quadruple the global major corporate CEO average, with $14.25 million in annual pay and a 401 index value. (Photo: Rob Hyrons/Shutterstock)
U.S. CEOs Are World's Best - For Themselves
How can the same marketplace value the labor of U.S. CEOs so much more highly than the labor of CEOs from other nations?
May 30, 2018
No single statistic, in isolation, tells us particularly much. Numbers only gain real meaning when we compare them. Take, for instance, the figure for the increase in CEO pay last year at major American corporations. A statistic for this increase -- 6.4 percent -- appears in the just-released 2018 edition of the AFL-CIO's annual PayWatch report on corporate compensation.
Does that 6.4 percent increase rate as a big deal -- or nothing to get worked up about? We can't reasonably answer that question without putting the 6.4 percent figure into some sort of broader perspective. The new PayWatch report, thankfully, provides that context: Average worker pay in the United States last year increased just 2.6 percent.
In other words, as the PayWatch study notes, "the imbalance in our economy between the pay of CEOs and working people is worsening." That is a big deal.
But to really understand how staggering America's CEO-worker pay imbalance has become, we need to widen our field of comparative vision, from domestic to global.
And what do we find when we take that step? Simply this: CEOs in the United States make significantly more than their counterparts in our peer nations, and American workers make significantly less.
Researchers at Bloomberg have conveniently reduced global CEO pay trends down to a simple index. These researchers have looked at major corporations in 22 nations around the world. CEO pay for all these nations combined last year averaged $3.55 million. Bloomberg gives this average an index value of 100.
CEOs in Canada turn out to take home almost twice this global CEO pay average. Their average $6.49 million take-home gives them an index value of 183. UK CEOs make a little bit more than twice the global average. They average $7.95 million in pay, enough for a 224 index value.
What about CEOs in the United States? They top the Bloomberg global CEO charts. U.S. CEOs average over quadruple the global major corporate CEO average, with $14.25 million in annual pay and a 401 index value.
The next highest nation for CEO pay? Switzerland. Swiss chief execs average $8.5 million, not much more than British CEOs.
Global comparisons like these make apologists for American corporate executive compensation nervous, and for good reason.
These defenders of our unequal status quo like to claim that CEO pay in the United States simply reflects the value that the "market" places on the labor of chief executives. But U.S. CEOs compete in the same global marketplace as CEOs from Great Britain, Canada, and Switzerland. How can the same marketplace value the labor of U.S. CEOs so much more highly than the labor of CEOs from other nations?
America's corporate cheerleaders have an answer: U.S. CEOs must be the world's best CEOs!
In one sense, that claim rates as true. U.S. CEOs certainly do deliver the best results for themselves. They certainly do not, on the other hand, deliver the best results for average people in their nations.
Analysts at HowMuch.net have just crunched data from the OECD, the official economic research agency of the world's developed nations, to chart how much workers take home in the world's top national economies.
U.S. workers labor under the world's highest-paid bosses. These workers turn out to have smaller paychecks than wage-earners in 11 other major nations. Average workers in Switzerland made $70,835 in 2017. Average workers in the United States made $52,988.
Swiss corporate CEOs, remember, make less than 60 percent of what U.S. CEOs earn.
The Swiss, by the way, happen to feel that their own CEOs are grabbing much too much, well more than their fair share. Voters in Switzerland have actually passed a national referendum designed to moderate top executive pay.
What might those Swiss voters feel, we can only wonder, if they lived in the United States?
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Sam Pizzigati
Sam Pizzigati, veteran labor journalist and Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, edits Inequality.org. His recent books include: The Case for a Maximum Wage (2018) and The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 (2012).
No single statistic, in isolation, tells us particularly much. Numbers only gain real meaning when we compare them. Take, for instance, the figure for the increase in CEO pay last year at major American corporations. A statistic for this increase -- 6.4 percent -- appears in the just-released 2018 edition of the AFL-CIO's annual PayWatch report on corporate compensation.
Does that 6.4 percent increase rate as a big deal -- or nothing to get worked up about? We can't reasonably answer that question without putting the 6.4 percent figure into some sort of broader perspective. The new PayWatch report, thankfully, provides that context: Average worker pay in the United States last year increased just 2.6 percent.
In other words, as the PayWatch study notes, "the imbalance in our economy between the pay of CEOs and working people is worsening." That is a big deal.
But to really understand how staggering America's CEO-worker pay imbalance has become, we need to widen our field of comparative vision, from domestic to global.
And what do we find when we take that step? Simply this: CEOs in the United States make significantly more than their counterparts in our peer nations, and American workers make significantly less.
Researchers at Bloomberg have conveniently reduced global CEO pay trends down to a simple index. These researchers have looked at major corporations in 22 nations around the world. CEO pay for all these nations combined last year averaged $3.55 million. Bloomberg gives this average an index value of 100.
CEOs in Canada turn out to take home almost twice this global CEO pay average. Their average $6.49 million take-home gives them an index value of 183. UK CEOs make a little bit more than twice the global average. They average $7.95 million in pay, enough for a 224 index value.
What about CEOs in the United States? They top the Bloomberg global CEO charts. U.S. CEOs average over quadruple the global major corporate CEO average, with $14.25 million in annual pay and a 401 index value.
The next highest nation for CEO pay? Switzerland. Swiss chief execs average $8.5 million, not much more than British CEOs.
Global comparisons like these make apologists for American corporate executive compensation nervous, and for good reason.
These defenders of our unequal status quo like to claim that CEO pay in the United States simply reflects the value that the "market" places on the labor of chief executives. But U.S. CEOs compete in the same global marketplace as CEOs from Great Britain, Canada, and Switzerland. How can the same marketplace value the labor of U.S. CEOs so much more highly than the labor of CEOs from other nations?
America's corporate cheerleaders have an answer: U.S. CEOs must be the world's best CEOs!
In one sense, that claim rates as true. U.S. CEOs certainly do deliver the best results for themselves. They certainly do not, on the other hand, deliver the best results for average people in their nations.
Analysts at HowMuch.net have just crunched data from the OECD, the official economic research agency of the world's developed nations, to chart how much workers take home in the world's top national economies.
U.S. workers labor under the world's highest-paid bosses. These workers turn out to have smaller paychecks than wage-earners in 11 other major nations. Average workers in Switzerland made $70,835 in 2017. Average workers in the United States made $52,988.
Swiss corporate CEOs, remember, make less than 60 percent of what U.S. CEOs earn.
The Swiss, by the way, happen to feel that their own CEOs are grabbing much too much, well more than their fair share. Voters in Switzerland have actually passed a national referendum designed to moderate top executive pay.
What might those Swiss voters feel, we can only wonder, if they lived in the United States?
Sam Pizzigati
Sam Pizzigati, veteran labor journalist and Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, edits Inequality.org. His recent books include: The Case for a Maximum Wage (2018) and The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 (2012).
No single statistic, in isolation, tells us particularly much. Numbers only gain real meaning when we compare them. Take, for instance, the figure for the increase in CEO pay last year at major American corporations. A statistic for this increase -- 6.4 percent -- appears in the just-released 2018 edition of the AFL-CIO's annual PayWatch report on corporate compensation.
Does that 6.4 percent increase rate as a big deal -- or nothing to get worked up about? We can't reasonably answer that question without putting the 6.4 percent figure into some sort of broader perspective. The new PayWatch report, thankfully, provides that context: Average worker pay in the United States last year increased just 2.6 percent.
In other words, as the PayWatch study notes, "the imbalance in our economy between the pay of CEOs and working people is worsening." That is a big deal.
But to really understand how staggering America's CEO-worker pay imbalance has become, we need to widen our field of comparative vision, from domestic to global.
And what do we find when we take that step? Simply this: CEOs in the United States make significantly more than their counterparts in our peer nations, and American workers make significantly less.
Researchers at Bloomberg have conveniently reduced global CEO pay trends down to a simple index. These researchers have looked at major corporations in 22 nations around the world. CEO pay for all these nations combined last year averaged $3.55 million. Bloomberg gives this average an index value of 100.
CEOs in Canada turn out to take home almost twice this global CEO pay average. Their average $6.49 million take-home gives them an index value of 183. UK CEOs make a little bit more than twice the global average. They average $7.95 million in pay, enough for a 224 index value.
What about CEOs in the United States? They top the Bloomberg global CEO charts. U.S. CEOs average over quadruple the global major corporate CEO average, with $14.25 million in annual pay and a 401 index value.
The next highest nation for CEO pay? Switzerland. Swiss chief execs average $8.5 million, not much more than British CEOs.
Global comparisons like these make apologists for American corporate executive compensation nervous, and for good reason.
These defenders of our unequal status quo like to claim that CEO pay in the United States simply reflects the value that the "market" places on the labor of chief executives. But U.S. CEOs compete in the same global marketplace as CEOs from Great Britain, Canada, and Switzerland. How can the same marketplace value the labor of U.S. CEOs so much more highly than the labor of CEOs from other nations?
America's corporate cheerleaders have an answer: U.S. CEOs must be the world's best CEOs!
In one sense, that claim rates as true. U.S. CEOs certainly do deliver the best results for themselves. They certainly do not, on the other hand, deliver the best results for average people in their nations.
Analysts at HowMuch.net have just crunched data from the OECD, the official economic research agency of the world's developed nations, to chart how much workers take home in the world's top national economies.
U.S. workers labor under the world's highest-paid bosses. These workers turn out to have smaller paychecks than wage-earners in 11 other major nations. Average workers in Switzerland made $70,835 in 2017. Average workers in the United States made $52,988.
Swiss corporate CEOs, remember, make less than 60 percent of what U.S. CEOs earn.
The Swiss, by the way, happen to feel that their own CEOs are grabbing much too much, well more than their fair share. Voters in Switzerland have actually passed a national referendum designed to moderate top executive pay.
What might those Swiss voters feel, we can only wonder, if they lived in the United States?
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy