The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%.
Inflation also outpaced worker pay increases, rising by 25.9%. CEO to worker pay ratio at the low-wage 100 firms increased 8.4% between 2019 and 2025. The average CEO compensation among low-wage 100 corporations was $17.5m in 2025, compared to median worker pay of $36,571.
The wealth of at least 36 billionaires is linked to these low-wage 100 corporations, including Walmart’s eight Walton family members, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott, and Carvana co-founders Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III. Many of the employees at these companies have to rely on those programs, and then so many of them have also been terrorized and detained by ICE agents,” added Anderson. Between 2019 and 2025, the low-wage 100 firms spent $718bn on stock buybacks.
Among the 100 low-wage firms, Walmart spent the most on stock buybacks, at $8.1bn, equivalent to a $3,851 bonus to each of the company’s 2.1 million workers. Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillan, who stepped down in January 2026, received $29.2m in compensation in 2025, 958 times more than the median worker pay at Walmart of $30,520. The report cites several policy solutions to excessive executive pay at corporations, including a tax hike on corporations that pay CEOs more than 50 times what they pay their median employees, an increase on stock buyback taxes and leveraging government contracts and subsidies to bar contractors from engaging in stock buybacks.
Walmart did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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