America's top CEOs got another raise in 2025, widening the gap with workers despite stronger employee wages
By Shahzaib Saqib I SCN NEWS
NEW YORK — Pay packages for chief executives at America's biggest publicly traded companies climbed again in 2025, widening the compensation gap with ordinary workers even as employee wages posted solid gains. Median compensation for CEOs in an Associated Press analysis of S&P 500 companies reached $17.7 million, an increase of 5.9% from 2024, according to data compiled by executive-pay research firm Equilar. The median employee at those companies earned $89,744, up 4.7%, meaning executive compensation once again grew faster than the pay of the typical worker.
The difference becomes clearer when the annual figures are translated into time. At $17.7 million, the median CEO package works out to roughly $48,500 for every calendar day of the year. A worker earning the $89,744 median would need nearly 197 years to receive the equivalent amount, assuming neither figure changed. The comparison is illustrative rather than a literal salary calculation because executive packages are heavily composed of stock awards that may vest over time and depend on performance conditions. Nevertheless, Equilar's standardized figures show the median CEO pay ratio rising to approximately 200 times that of the median employee, from 189-to-1 a year earlier.
The headline numbers can also be misleading if treated as conventional salaries. Median CEO base salary was about $1.3 million. The much larger source of executive wealth was equity: median stock awards reached $10.9 million, an 11.5% annual increase. Median bonus and performance-based cash awards reached about $2.7 million, while perks climbed 17.7% to approximately $310,369. Companies use those equity-heavy packages to connect executive compensation to share prices and long-term performance targets, although the eventual value received by a CEO can be substantially higher or lower than the amount reported when an award is granted.
The survey covered 337 CEOs at S&P 500 companies that filed proxy statements with regulators between January 1 and April 30, 2026. Executives had to have served for at least two consecutive fiscal years, a methodology intended to reduce distortions from one-time recruitment packages. Equilar calculates compensation by combining salary, bonuses, perks, stock and option awards and other compensation, valuing equity awards when they are granted rather than according to what executives ultimately receive years later.
At the extreme end of corporate compensation, the numbers bear little resemblance even to the $17.7 million median. Equilar's S&P 500 study placed Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the top with a reported 2025 compensation award valued at approximately $132.3 billion, consisting of a long-term stock award tied to extraordinarily ambitious market-capitalization and operating targets. The figure is not equivalent to $132.3 billion in cash paid to Musk in 2025: realizing the full value depends on meeting the award's conditions. That distinction is essential when comparing executive packages with annual worker salaries.
Below Musk, Welltower CEO Shankh Mitra received a package valued at roughly $821 million, while Broadcom's Hock Tan received about $205.3 million and Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav about $165 million. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon received approximately $118.9 million. Equilar said five executives in the S&P 500 study received packages exceeding $100 million, the largest concentration of nine-figure CEO awards recorded in the study.
The scale of compensation also differs sharply across industries. Communication-services companies had the highest median CEO package at approximately $33.9 million, followed by technology at $22.5 million and financial services at $21.3 million. Real estate recorded the lowest sector median at roughly $13.6 million — still more than 150 times the $89,744 median employee compensation across the companies examined. New York-based companies had the highest median CEO compensation among states with sufficient representation, at $26.6 million, followed by California at $24.9 million.
Women remain dramatically underrepresented at the top of the S&P 500 companies examined. Only 27 of the 337 CEOs qualifying for the AP/Equilar analysis were women, unchanged from the previous year's study. Their median compensation, however, was slightly higher than the overall figure at $18.1 million. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser led female executives in the survey with a package valued at approximately $95.8 million, followed by AMD CEO Lisa Su at about $55.2 million and General Motors CEO Mary Barra at approximately $29.9 million.
The worker side of the comparison is more complicated than a simple narrative of stagnant wages. Median employee compensation increased 4.7% in 2025, outpacing inflation, according to AP's analysis. But workers entered the year after several years of accumulated increases in housing, food and other living costs, leaving household affordability a major concern even as nominal wages improved. CEO compensation, meanwhile, remained strongly connected to stock-market performance and corporate profits, allowing executive packages to benefit disproportionately when equity valuations rise.
The 5.9% increase was actually a slower rate of CEO-pay growth than in the previous year. Equilar said median CEO compensation had risen 9.7% in its prior annual study, making 2025 the smallest annual increase since 2022. But because CEO compensation began from such a dramatically higher base and still grew faster than employee compensation, the gap continued widening despite that slowdown.
That is the more revealing number behind America's CEO-pay rankings. The typical chief executive in the study did not simply make millions more than a worker; the CEO's compensation also increased faster. Workers gained 4.7%, CEOs gained 5.9%, and the median pay ratio moved to 200-to-1. The debate over executive compensation is therefore no longer explained by salaries alone. Increasingly, it is a story about who participates most heavily in the wealth created when corporate equity values rise — because stock awards, not the CEO paycheck, are producing much of the extraordinary gap at the top.