The wage gap between CEOs and workers at the lowest-paying firms on the S&P 500 rose by almost 13% between 2019 and 2024, an analysis released Thursday shows, with CEO pay rising more than twice as quickly as that of the average worker.
The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio at the Low-Wage 100 companies widened by 12.9% percent over the study period, from 560 to 1 in 2019 to 632 to 1 in 2024.
Starbucks, the global coffee chain, had the largest pay ratio gap in the entire S&P 500 at 6,666 to 1 last year—Brian Niccol reportedly pocketed $95.8 million while the average worker earned $14,674, the eighth-lowest median pay of any S&P 500 firm, the report found.
An overwhelming majority of likely voters surveyed by Data for Progress last year think corporations with extreme wage gaps should be penalized. Eighty percent of respondents said they’d support a tax hike for corporations that pay their CEO 50 or more times what they pay their median employees. In an April poll conducted by FlexJobs, 80% of workers believed CEOs are overpaid and 69% said they didn’t believe the CEO of their company could do their job for one week.