Gap between CEO, worker pay continues to widen, report shows

The nation’s top executives gave themselves far bigger raises than the average worker saw last year.

The AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch report, released earlier this month, found that the pay gap between CEOs and the rest of us widened in 2025, with companies on the S&P 500 paying their chief executives 312 times more than the median U.S. worker, a 21% increase over 2024.

The nation’s largest labor federation analyzes compensation data each year to produce the report.

While the nationwide ratio for CEO-to-worker pay last year was 312-to-1, the ratio was even greater at six Minnesota-based, publicly traded firms:

• Life Time Group Holdings: 1,814- to-1 (CEO earned $15.2 million)
• Target: 794-to-1 ($21.8 million)
• UnitedHealth Group: 748-to-1 ($60.9 million)
• Best Buy: 542-to-1 ($16.1 million)
• Ecolab: 326-to-1 ($17.4 million)
• 3M: 316-to-1 ($21 million)

This year, researchers chose to exclude one CEO – Elon Musk – from their calculations. Musk’s $158.3 billion pay package, which made him the world’s first trillionaire, would have skewed the data, they said.

Still, with an average pay of $22.8 million last year, other CEOs on the S&P 500 enjoyed their highest level of compensation in the three decades that the AFL-CIO has been producing the report.

That marks “a new, shameful high,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said at press conference to unveil the findings.

Redmond also noted that President Donald Trump has raked in $2.2 billion in income – much of it from crypto deals that cash in on his influence – since returning to the White House last year.

“Meanwhile, working Americans are struggling to feed their kids and pay their electric bills,” Redmond said.

Indeed, workers’ share of U.S. national income has fallen to its lowest level since World War II, per to the report.

Recent surveys show workers are increasingly concerned about affordability and economic uncertainty: 16% of U.S. adults cannot pay all their bills in full, 26% have skipped medical care due to cost and 37% do not have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense.

The AFL-CIO’s report takes aim at several companies on the S&P 500 where CEO pay continues to soar as an outsized share of their employees rely on public assistance, like Medicaid and SNAP, to make ends meet, including Amazon, Dollar Tree, FedEx, McDonald’s and Walmart.

Last summer, as part of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” Trump and Republican majorities slashed federal support programs to pay for tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans – a sign of misplaced priorities in Washington, Redmond said.

“There’s a better economy we can build for working people,” he added. “That’s why the labor movement will continue to fight for every worker to have a union contract that begins to level the playing field and ensures they take home the share of the profit they create.”

Find the report online at paywatch.org.