12 Things You Need To Know from AFL-CIO’s 2026 Executive Paywatch Report
S&P 500 CEOs took home an average pay of $22.8 million in 2025 and made 312 times the wage of the median U.S. worker, up from 285 times in 2024, the AFL-CIO’s 2026 Executive Paywatch report showed. While working Americans are struggling over every bill, every purchase and every paycheck, corporate CEOs are doing better than ever.
Here are 12 things you need to know from AFL-CIO’s 2026 Executive Paywatch Report:
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CEO pay is up, up and away, thanks to Elon Musk, who became the world’s first trillionaire. In 2025, Elon Musk’s $158 billion pay package at Tesla broke the CEO pay curve.1 It was 14 times higher than the total compensation of all other S&P 500 company CEOs combined.
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Including Musk, S&P 500 CEOs received $340.1 million on average in 2025, about a 1,700% increase over the previous year. Excluding Musk’s Tesla pay package, the average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased 21%, from $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025.
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The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio across S&P 500 Index companies was 5,387-to-1 in 2025. Musk’s total compensation at Tesla was 2,522,203 times the median Tesla employee’s pay in 2025.2 Excluding Musk, the average pay ratio of S&P 500 companies increased from 285-to-1 in 2024 to 312-to-1 in 2025.
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2025 also was a very good year for President Trump. According to federal disclosure forms, Trump received $2.2 billion in income in 2025 after returning to the White House for a second term, a nearly 254% increase from what he received in 2024.3 Trump’s 2025 receipts included $1.4 billion from the sale of $TRUMP memecoins and World Liberty Financial, his family’s cryptocurrency business.4 The median U.S. worker would need to work 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in 2025.
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Average S&P 500 CEO pay increased from $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025, excluding Elon Musk’s Tesla compensation.
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Workers’ share of U.S. national income has fallen to the lowest level since World War II.
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The cost of living for average working people has risen as 8% of households experience food insecurity, 16% of adults cannot pay all their bills in full, and 26% of adults skipped medical care due to cost.
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Housing unaffordability has also increased as 14% of homeowners struggle to pay their insurance premiums, 23% of renters have fallen behind on their rent in the past year, and 49% of adults younger than 30 live with a parent.
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Income insecurity has also risen as 8% of adults use payday, pawn or other nontraditional loans; 33% of adults do not have any retirement savings; and 37% of adults do not have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense.
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Meanwhile, employees of large employers like Amazon, Dollar Tree, FedEx, McDonald’s and Walmart are among the top recipients of public assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps).
- Excessive CEO compensation contributes to growing economic inequality. It creates the risk that CEOs will make short-term decisions to maximize their pay, even if it hurts the company’s long-term health. And it’s simply unfair to the workers whose labor generates the profit these CEOs capitalize on.
- According to the Economic Policy Institute, lower rates of union membership—which wealthy CEOs and big corporations have engineered with union-busting and donations to anti-worker politicians—are deeply connected to the stratospheric rise in CEO pay. Requiring companies with a CEO-to-worker pay ratio above 100-to-1 to negotiate a union contract with their employees would go a long way toward addressing growing economic inequality.