Top US CEO pay rose 7.7% last year, outpacing inflation, study finds

https://www.reuters.com/business/top-us-ceo-pay-rose-77-last-year-outpacing-inflation-study-finds-2023-05-03/

by pseudolus • 3 years ago

59 60 3 years ago

reuters.com

thrillgore• 3 years ago

Must be nice to be paid to do little.

amir734jj• 3 years ago

Actually CEOs or VPs get something called golden parachute when they leave a company. That is usually a lot of money.

Madmallard6• 3 years ago

Thinking CEOs do little is rather naive. On average they work same number of hours but the amount of stress they’re under is much higher than average.

sharemywin3• 3 years ago

than like a firefighter or a cop or a soldier?

Most people aren't saying that CEOs don't deserve more pay than the average worker but the rich continuing to get richer hasn't ever really worked out for the rich in the long run.

The bottom line is how much wealth/income inequality does a society want to accept. You have 2 paths ignore it and it will get more extreme or try to steer the ship towards a more equitable society. not a completely equitable society because that's impossible and people don't seem to work that well under that system, but there should be a goal in the middle somewhere.

incahoots5• 3 years ago

As opposed to whom? Which same hours are you suggesting they work? I'm a little confused by your comment here.

JustBreath• 3 years ago

It's not that they do little, it's just that they don't deserve this when the people under them effectively foot the bill in lack of pay raises.

sharemywin3• 3 years ago

why should a CEO get a bonus if they just fired people?

bushbaba• 3 years ago

Most the CEOs I’ve met work every day of the week and often till 8-11pm. It’s non stop work with little to no time for family. There’s a reason CEOs often have “broken” households and other health challenges.

cableshaft• 3 years ago

Which for any CEO that's in a corporation (the only ones that would fall into the "top CEOs" list) their work is entirely public or private meetings, phone calls, golf outings, or lunches with clients.

And they can decide when and how long to take a break, and what to delegate to which underling, because there's no one above them. Let's not pretend it's the same type of work here.

I could probably work 8am to 11pm every day if that was all I was doing.

klyrs• 3 years ago

Counterpoint, quite a few CEOs hold that title at multiple companies. If the job was so hard and required so much work then they wouldn't be able to swing this.

Timon3• 3 years ago

Many people have to do the same or more just to survive, not because they freely choose to do so. How many single parents can spend almost no time with their family because they have multiple jobs? The CEO can always step down, the single parent has no choice.

incahoots5• 3 years ago

Not defending CEOs but I think a lot of folks misinterpret that CEOs are 'done' after an 8/10 hour shift, when in reality they're on the clock their entire lives.

I would argue so are doctors but they don't get CEO pay, so there ya go.

mharig• 3 years ago

It may outpace the official inflation rate. But I do not trust those numbers. Maybe the CEOs have a better knowledge of it, and the 7.7% are nearer to the true value?

justin66• 3 years ago

I'm sure that's right. If there's one thing US CEOs are focused on, it's making certain their pay increases track the inflation rate precisely.

refurb2• 3 years ago

"100 highest paid CEOs" means this is a flawed study.

It's not the same CEOs year to year, it's just the highest paid, and since CEO pay is mostly equity, it's probably the CEOs of the top performing companies last year.

So if CEO #1 was on the list last year, and the company did worse this year, they likely aren't on the list, saw a compensation drop, but hey, that doesn't make headlines to say "Top paid CEOs from 2022 saw a compensation drop of 10% this year".

FireBeyond• 3 years ago

it's probably the CEOs of the top performing companies last year.

Citation needed. For Jefferies', one of those cited:

"Revenue Growth (Quarterly YoY) -8.35

Revenue Growth Rate (5Y) 8.06"

doesn't look stellar to me.

refurb2• 3 years ago

CEOs don’t get paid based on quarterly YOY results.

“Jefferies' 2022 total investment banking revenues, while down 38% from an off-the-charts 2021, represented our second-best year ever and were substantially above 2019 levels”

educaysean• 3 years ago

I assume the "top" percentiles for most fields will have reported above average earnings. It would have been a more interesting article if they also looked at the pay for top 100 doctors, athletes, or other salaries positions as a point of comparison.

SilverBirch• 3 years ago

That's kind of not what this shows. They're taking the top paid CEOs of companies that are worth >$1Bn, and then looked at their pay YoY. Your comparison doesn't really apply, because they're not looking at the 100 people who go the biggest pay rises, they're looking at the best paid. So most likely what's happening here is you have a bunch of CEOs of top companies in 2021/22 and they were paid like they were great, and this year they're being paid even more - even though last year they were already being valued like they were rockstars. It's not a great metric, but it just sort of highlights that CEO pay continues to just sky rocket away from normal pay.

I think the question to ask is: Look at these companies, did their CEO do: (a) better than expected this year, (b) as expected this year or (c) worse than expected this year. What seems to consistently come out of these articles is that CEOs who fit (a) get paid a lot more YoY, CEOs who fit (b) get paid a lot more YoY, and CEOs who fit (c) get paid a lot more YoY.

And of course, some of it is richly ironic, one of the companies listed is equilar - a company whose raison d'etre is suppressing employee pay, they're a legal version of a cartel.

damagednoob2• 3 years ago

Surely, if you get to the position of running a multi-billion dollar company on some level you should know what you're doing? No one is taking a rookie kart racing driver and putting them straight into Formula 1.

endisneigh4• 3 years ago

if CEOs don't do much, why aren't better people, with their supposedly better management skills, growing faster?

ranger207• 3 years ago

the key skill of a ceo isn't management, it's social connections

incahoots5• 3 years ago

Networking. Knowing the whos who, and the whats what. Johnny off the street isn't going to be CEO by working hard. He gets to the top by knowing something or someone.

Nepotism is the key factor here, don't be fooled otherwise.

endisneigh4• 3 years ago

The best paid CEOs are not the most connected, though

yoyohello132• 3 years ago

This is the only social media site where it seems like the majority of people actually think CEOs deserve their inflated salaries. Probably because a lot of people here are CEOs (or hope to become one).

Sure, the boss of bosses should make more that the average worker, but 300x-500x more? Rationalize about "bringing value" as much as you want, but if this class division continues it will not end well for the rich.

endisneigh4• 3 years ago

How much should CEOs be paid?

blatant303• 3 years ago

They should get what they fucking deserve jk of course

somedude8952• 3 years ago

Probably because a lot of people here are CEOs (or hope to become one)

I earn a bit above median and have no aspirations even for a lower management position.

I see this stuff and to me it seems like either jealousy or white-knighting. A lot of people protesting these CEO pays seem to want to see the rich make less much more so than they actually want the lower class to make more. And the "it will not end well for the rich" polemic just confirms that assumption to me.

mbfg2• 3 years ago

"seem to want to see the rich make less much more so than they actually want the lower class to make more"

and you are saying that would be a bad thing? Seems hard to say that would't make for a better society.

wang_li• 3 years ago

These types of stories lead to comments such as yours which draw a false vision of how things are. According to BLS data there are approximately 200,000 people in the US who hold the position of CEO. Their average compensation is ~4x the average worker.

jjtheblunt• 3 years ago

This is the only social media site where it seems like the majority of people actually think CEOs deserve their inflated salaries.

I never got that impression, but articles i read could differ from those you read here, of course, giving different impressions.

damagednoob2• 3 years ago

'Top CEO', not 'Average CEO'. How much does LeBron James make in salary/endorsements/etc vs the average NBA player or Ronaldo vs the average professional soccer player?

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

In Germany, the concept called co-determination puts the labor union representative on the board.

I just wish discussion here in the states had inspiration from concepts that work, instead of these false dilemmas we have to pretend to choose between. Well, the saddest part is that you all aren’t pretending, you don’t know other options aren’t being presented.

boeingUH60• 3 years ago

The average CEO doesn’t even earn close to $1 million annually. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median CEO pay is $189,520 [1], less than most FAANG software engineers.

What you’re looking at here are CEOs of the top 500 companies..of course they’ll earn much more than the average.

I don’t see anyone complaining that Beyoncé gets millions of dollars per performance while the average musician earns pittance. It’s the same here. It’s news orgs chasing clickbait to make money from the naive and perpetually outraged.

1- https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes111011.htm

WastingMyTime892• 3 years ago

I don’t see anyone complaining that Beyoncé gets millions of dollars per performance while the average musician earns pittance.

It would be a legitimate position to take. The system sustaining Beyoncé revenue is approximately the same one which is used to justify star CEO revenues.

The interesting question isn’t is it expected that top CEO will earn more than average CEO anyway. It’s why has the gap between the salary of top CEO and their average worker grew so much in the past 50 years. It’s a legitimate question to ask.

lapcat• 3 years ago

CEO compensation is determined by board of directors, which are largely comprised of other CEOs, who are usually nominated by the CEO and rubber stamped. It's very incestuous. Corporate governance is a joke.

The biggest problem is that corporate ownership is both divided among many stockholders and also fleeting, with stock constantly changing hands. This allows the executives to dominate control of publicly owned corporations.

Madmallard6• 3 years ago

I'd hope at the very minimum our leaders are insulated against inflation. Maybe other more important jobs in the sector should also be insulated against it, but what can you do?

Top US CEO pay rose 7.7% last year, outpacing inflation, study finds

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