Link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/15/seti-a15.html

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The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/DryDeer775 on 2026-08-16 13:37:45+00:00.

Median compensation for chief executives at S&P 500 companies reached $17.3 million in 2025, according to the AFL-CIO’s 2026 Executive Paywatch report, released Thursday.

Excluding Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, average S&P 500 CEO compensation rose 21 percent in a single year, from $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025. This was the highest level recorded since the AFL-CIO began tracking the figure in the 1990s.

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio increased from 285 to one in 2024 to 312 to one in 2025, again excluding Musk. The median company ratio was 198 to one. A majority of S&P 500 CEOs received more in one day than the median US worker earned during the entire year.

But Musk represents the most extreme expression of this process. Tesla reported $158.3 billion in 2025 compensation for Musk, 14 times the combined compensation of all the other S&P 500 CEOs. The figure increased average S&P 500 CEO compensation to $340.1 million and the average pay ratio to 5,387 to one. In 2025, Tesla reported median employee compensation of $62,786, producing a staggering ratio of 2,522,203 to one for this single company.

These figures do not include Musk's payday from the SpaceX IPO in June, which briefly made him the world's first trillionaire.

The figures document a vast transfer of wealth to a corporate and financial oligarchy. In the second quarter of 2026, the share of nonfarm business output going to workers fell to 52.9 percent, the lowest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics series began in 1947. Real hourly compensation fell 3.1 percent during the quarter at an annualized rate.