CEO pay skyrockets in 2025 amid growing income inequality in the US

The pay gap between executives and their employees has widened from 2024 to 2025, with chief executives making 312 times what their median worker earned, according to the AFL-CIO, the largest coalition of labour unions in the United States.

That’s up from the previous rate of 285 times the median worker salary for executives working in the companies listed on the S&P 500 index.

The figures were released on Thursday as part of the AFL-CIO’s annual Paywatch report, which tracks the growing gulf in wages.

The labour federation warned that the divide in pay risks having broader effects for the global marketplace. If CEOs are focused on increasing their paycheques, the AFL-CIO warned that they may be less concerned about the stability of their companies — or of the economy overall.

“Excessive CEO compensation contributes to growing economic inequality,” the AFL-CIO wrote. “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.”

In determining the executive-to-worker pay ratio, the AFL-CIO explained it had to exclude one outlier: the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

In 2025, Musk made $158bn as CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla — 2.5 million times more than the company’s average employee. His salary even dwarfed the company’s revenue for the year, which was $94bn.

That same year, the carmaker reported a 3 percent decline in revenue. Sales dropped by roughly 9 percent, as some consumers boycotted the company over Musk’s participation in President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Tesla also faced 11 vehicle recalls last year, accounting for 745,000 of its cars.

For the first half of 2025, Musk served as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an office Trump established to oversee cuts to the federal workforce and spending.

He also oversees multiple business interests beyond Tesla, including the social media platform X and the rocket company SpaceX.

In June, the initial public offering (IPO) for SpaceX’s stock briefly ballooned Musk’s net worth, and he was listed for a short time as the world’s first trillionaire.

Including Musk, on average, the pay for a chief executive in an S&P 500 company jumped 1,700 percent last year to reach $3.1bn.

Excluding Musk, the increase was slightly more modest. Whereas in 2024 the average CEO pay was roughly $19m, in 2025 the figure increased by 21 percent to $22.8m.

That sum is nearly double the average compensation package for chief executives a decade ago.

Uneven distribution across industries

Different industries, however, saw varying ratios in executive-to-worker income.

The biggest pay disparity was in the manufacturing sector, with the average CEO making $696m and the average worker in the industry making slightly more than $93,000.

That amounted to a more-than-11,000 percent difference in their salaries. Tesla marks the biggest disparity in the sector, helping to drive the pay ratio higher.

The industry with the second-highest pay ratio was the arts, entertainment and recreation sector, where executives make an average of $24.6m, compared to an average of around $25,000 for median workers. The difference was a ratio of 1,057 to one.

One of the most stark examples of a pay divide was the coffee chain Starbucks, where the average worker made $17,279 — only $1,629 higher than the federal poverty line in 2025.

With CEO Brian Niccol earning north of $30m last year, experts estimate the pay ratio in the company is 1,794 to one.

The AFL-CIO’s report also showed that Amazon, Dollar Tree, FedEx, McDonald’s and Walmart workers are the largest recipients of social assistance programmes.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made 51 times more than the company’s average employee, while McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski made 1,082 times more than the average worker at the Chicago, Illinois-based fast-food giant.

Trump posts surge in earnings

Thursday’s report also examined Trump’s income during the first year of his second term in office.

Trump’s campaigns for public office have largely hinged on his record as a businessman, and he has pitched himself to voters as uniquely qualified to address the country’s economic needs.

But critics have accused him of profiting from the presidency, whether through trademarks or policies favourable to his business interests, including cryptocurrency.

The AFL-CIO report found that Trump’s income surged 254 percent last year, over what he made in 2024, before his return to the White House.

The $2.2bn worth of income he earned in 2025 stemmed largely from World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, and the sale of meme coins.

Those earnings are roughly 43,154 times what the median US worker made last year, according to the AFL-CIO. Approximately 37 percent of US adults cannot cover a $400 emergency expense.

This comes as US consumer sentiment slipped 8 percent, with consumers growing more wary of business conditions and the strength of their personal finances, according to a report from the University of Michigan released on Friday.

The labour market is also experiencing a downturn, with the US economy shedding 23,000 jobs in July, according to a monthly report from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The Conference Board, a nonprofit think tank focused on the economy, also found last month that confidence in the state of the US economy is trending downward for the third consecutive month.