Average pay for the 100 most overpaid U.S. CEOs has risen by 30% and is now over 300 times that of the average worker, according to As You Sow’s ninth annual 100 Most Overpaid CEOs report.
In the February 16 report, using Insightia data, As You Sow revealed that the average overpaid CEO’s pay was over $38 million, up from roughly $29 million the year before.
S&P 500 CEO pay was 324 times that of the median employee, on average, with Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy at the top of the range. His $212.7-million payout for 2022 was 6,474 times greater than the median Amazon employee wage of $32,855. Jassy, however, only ranked ninth in the reports list of the most overpaid CEOs.
David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery, Fabrizio Freda of Estee Lauder, Penn Entertainment’s Jay Snowden, Intel’s Patrick Gelsinger, and Glenn Fogel of Booking Holdings, formed the top five. Their combined pay totaled over $600 million.
As You Sow highlighted that shareholder opposition to these pay packages continues to grow, with last year seeing a five-year high of 12.6% average opposition to “say on pay” proposals at S&P 500 companies.
The report’s author, Rosanna Landis Weaver, said in a press release, “Every year we see more shareholders get serious about voting against compensation. This year, unfortunately, shareholder concern with excess pay is not truly reflected in the higher votes against pay, because the largest mutual funds continue to support the vast majority of overpaid CEOs.”