Everyone is benefitting from payflation — except workers and consumers.
Companies cut costs last year while raising prices and paying their CEOs more, according to a report by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a group that includes some of the largest labor unions in the United States.
In 2023, chief executives at S&P 500 companies were compensated 268 times as much as their median worker, the AFL-CIO report found. CEOs at some companies — such as Mattel, Abercrombie & Fitch, and AMC Entertainment — made thousands of times as much as their median workers.
“Inflation has slowed, but large corporations are still charging high prices. Meanwhile, it would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what CEOs receive in just one year,” the report said.
CEOs of some corporations saw their compensation quadruple in recent years. Christopher Winfrey, the CEO of Charter Communications, saw his compensation leap from $15.6 million in 2022 to over $89 million in 2023.
The report emphasized that a high CEO-to-worker pay ratio indicates that “companies suffer from a winner-take-all philosophy, where executives reap the lion’s share of compensation.” In contrast, a lower ratio indicates the company cares about creating high-wage jobs for workers.
ALF-CIO, representing 60 national and international labor unions, also warned in the report against another Trump presidency, blaming part of CEO payflation on his 2017 tax cuts that the federation said primarily benefitted the wealthiest echelon of Americans. The corporate tax cuts were a win for executives without increasing wages for the bottom 90% of workers, the report found, warning that Trump would “implement further tax breaks for corporations” if elected.
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