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

August 28, 2026 by

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.

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Unions brace for impact of Medicaid cuts, vow accountability

July 22, 2025 by

Quentin Ocama, a kindergarten teacher at Maxfield Elementary and member of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, spoke during the “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” bus tour stop.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans slashed funding for health care, nutrition programs and public schools, repealed tax incentives that create union construction jobs and authorized adding $3.5 trillion to the national debt – all to pay for a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and the wealthy.

The tax and spending legislation, signed by the president July 4, did not garner a single Democratic vote, as unions and other progressive groups slammed the bill – arguably the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history – as it advanced through the House and Senate.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, head of the nation’s largest labor federation, vowed to continue holding supporters accountable as the so-called big, beautiful bill’s ugly consequences become clearer.

“The AFL-CIO promises to put thousands of people to work canvassing colleagues, friends and families, reminding all, every day, of the Trump-GOP law’s harms,” Shuler said. “Campaigners will beat the drum from now through November 2026, and beyond.”

Union members in the Twin Cities wasted little time in doing just that. Several local unions rallied July 2 in a Minneapolis park, site of a nationwide “Stop the Billionaire Giveaway” bus tour stop.

The tour, sponsored by Fair Share America, aimed to raise awareness of the tax bill and its impact on families, communities and the economy. Health care workers, state employees, public educators and local lawmakers took turns describing the importance of federal funding to their communities and constituents.

“Without Medicaid, I would not be able to survive,” said Ace Taylor, a home care worker whose job caring for her disabled aunt is funded through Medicaid.

Claudia Hochstein, a state employee and member of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, said Medicaid’s burdensome new eligibility requirements serve a “dual goal” of frustrating people into giving up on their benefits – and giving political opponents of Medicaid fodder “to complain about government red tape.”

“They’re trying to break our public systems so they can make money off of privatizing them,” she added.

Accountability was on every speaker’s mind.

Taylor, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, traveled with other Medicaid advocates to Washington D.C. in June to urge representatives not to cut the program. Taylor recalled being told by one Republican congressperson, “You’ll be alright.”

“I guess we’ll just have to be louder,” she said.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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