The pay gap between executives and their employees has widened from 2024 to 2025, with chief executives making 312 times what their median worker earned, according to the AFL-CIO, the largest coalition of labour unions in the United States. That’s up from the previous rate of 285 times the median worker salary for executives working in the companies listed on the S&P 500 index. The figures were released on Thursday as part of the AFL-CIO’s annual Paywatch report, which tracks the growing gulf in wages.
The labour federation warned that the divide in pay risks having broader effects for the global marketplace. If CEOs are focused on increasing their paycheques, the AFL-CIO warned that they may be less concerned about the stability of their companies — or of the economy overall. In 2025, Musk made $158bn as CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla — 2.5 million times more than the company’s average employee.
His salary even dwarfed the company’s revenue for the year, which was $94bn. That same year, the carmaker reported a 3 percent decline in revenue. Sales dropped by roughly 9 percent, as some consumers boycotted the company over Musk’s participation in President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Tesla also faced 11 vehicle recalls last year, accounting for 745,000 of its cars. For the first half of 2025, Musk served as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an office Trump established to oversee cuts to the federal workforce and spending. He also oversees multiple business interests beyond Tesla, including the social media platform X and the rocket company SpaceX.
In June, the initial public offering (IPO) for SpaceX’s stock briefly ballooned Musk’s net worth, and he was listed for a short time as the world’s first trillionaire. Including Musk, on average, the pay for a chief executive in an S&P 500 company jumped 1,700 percent last year to reach $3.1bn. Excluding Musk, the increase was slightly more modest.
Whereas in 2024 the average CEO pay was roughly $19m, in 2025 the figure increased by 21 percent to $22.8m. That sum is nearly double the average compensation package for chief executives a decade ago. Different industries, however, saw varying ratios in executive-to-worker income.
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