Americans' wages are lagging inflation — except for CEOs, whose pay jumped 18%
CBSN
The CEOs of S&P 500 companies earned an average of $18.3 million last year — an increase of 18.2% and more than double the U.S. inflation rate, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO labor union.
The union's annual report on executive compensation, which has become a benchmark for rising inequality in the U.S., found that the ratio between CEO pay and worker earnings reached 324-to-1 last year, up from 299-to-1 in 2020 and 264-to-1 in 2019.
The findings underscore the financial stress that many workers are now experiencing due to inflation, which is outpacing typical wage growth. Although the pay of average workers rose 4.7% last year, their real earnings after inflation fell 2.4%. By contrast, CEOs kept well ahead of last year's inflation rate of 7.1%.
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