Highest-Paid CEOs | AFL-CIO (2024)

FAQs

Highest-Paid CEOs | AFL-CIO? ›

Chief executive officers (CEOs) get paid lots of money for being the top employees in the company. Why do they get paid so much? Like athletes and actors, CEOs provide a level of talent that is required to produce the desired product – in this case, a strongly performing company.

Chief executive officers (CEOs) get paid lots of money for being the top employees in the company. Why do they get paid so much? Like athletes and actors, CEOs provide a level of talent that is required to produce the desired product – in this case, a strongly performing company.

US CEO compensation

By company size, base, bonus, and total cash compensation all rise as revenue does, with total median cash compensation coming in at $1,639,000 at companies with revenue above $1 billion. By industry, CEOs at financial services firms are paid the most: $1,013,000 in median total cash compensation.

For private companies there is no reporting structure to make that possible. However, there are avenues for finding information on executives at public companies. The compensation packages for public companies are included in the form filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) usually referred to as a Proxy.

Estimating 2024 Salaries

That being said, we can estimate what 2024 CEO salaries will be based on recent trends - we estimate that the average CEO salary in 2024 will be $140,000, slightly down from the $142,000 that they were paid in 2023.

Who else is paid more than $100 million? Camara is one of just nine CEOs with pay packages exceeding $100 million. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman tops the list with a $253 million pay package last year.

For a company worth $ 10 million - $ 15 million , a good salary for a CEO would be in the range of $ 500,000 - $ 1 million per year . This would include a base salary , bonuses , and other benefits such as stock options .

The typical American would limit CEO pay to no more than six times that of the average worker. This figure is significantly below current pay multiples, which are approximately 210 times the average worker's pay, based on Equilar's compensation figures.

Which CEO has $1 salary? ›

It might sound uncanny, but it is true: CEOs and former CEOs from major tech companies have or had salaries of just $1. Yes, Elon Musk (Tesla), Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Meg Whitman (HP), and Steve Jobs (Apple) earn or earned paychecks of just one dollar a month. Don't believe us?

$50M to $150M

We found the lowest salary in this category to be $235,000. The highest salary for a CEO in a company with between $50M and $150M in revenue is $500,000. Of the participants in this category, the median salary is $300,000.

In the past 10 years, CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased by more than $5 million to an average of $16.7 million in 2022. Meanwhile, the average U.S. worker saw a wage increase of $15,460 over the past decade, earning on average just $61,900 in 2022.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon received $26.9 million in total compensation last fiscal year. The median compensation for Walmart employees was $27,642, per the company's annual proxy statement. Since 2009, McMillon has been paid $136 million for his work as a Walmart executive.

The CEOs in this group averaged $16.7 million, while average worker pay stood at $61,900. Using a slightly different methodology and sample, the Economic Policy Institute found that CEOs were paid 344 times as much as a typical worker in 2022, up from an average pay ratio of just 21 to 1 in 1965.

Assuming, a company is generating $15–20 million USD in revenue. At a profit margin of 20%, the company would be making $3–4 million USD in profit. The CEO might cost them upward of $100,000 but under $300,000. The scenario changes if the CEO is a primary equity holder in the company.

Tipsord's $24.4 million in total compensation for 2022 was nearly equivalent with the $24.5 million he collected for 2021, according to a filing with the Nebraska Department of Insurance.

Our data indicates that PepsiCo, Inc. has a market capitalization of US$243b, and total annual CEO compensation was reported as US$34m for the year to December 2023. That's a notable increase of 19% on last year. We think total compensation is more important but our data shows that the CEO salary is lower, at US$1.7m.