Chief executive officers leading America's lowest-paying corporations pulled in record-breaking compensation packages averaging £13.8 million in 2025, according to a striking new analysis published by the Institute for Policy Studies.
The report reveals that the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio across these top 100 S&P 500 companies climbed to 614-to-1, demonstrating a widening gulf between top executives and front-line employees.
While corporate leaders enjoyed massive financial gains, median worker pay lagged severely behind a 25.9 per cent national inflation rate, leaving ordinary staff earning less in real terms.
Compounding these economic pressures, front-line employees across retail and delivery sectors faced unprecedented challenges, including historic cuts to government assistance programmes such as Medicaid and SNAP.
Furthermore, the report highlights how workers at major firms like Walmart and DoorDash navigated heightened vulnerability amid aggressive immigration enforcement actions and workplace ICE raids.
Critics argue that corporate silence on these social crises stands in sharp contrast to the aggressive political lobbying undertaken by executive teams to secure favourable tax legislation.
As economic insecurity deepens for millions of households, the findings renew intense public debate over corporate social responsibility, executive compensation caps, and structural income inequality.
The wealth gap has been widening for years, but the latest data shows the gulf between bosses and workers at America's largest low-wage corporations has reached staggering levels.
The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio at these 100 S&P 500 companies with the lowest median pay rose to 614-to-1 in 2025, up from 574-to-1 in 2019.
The IPS's 32nd annual Executive Excess report zeroes in on corporations like Walmart, DoorDash and Target, examining how their leadership has pulled in more money while workers' wages stagnate.
Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation within the Low Wage 100 rose 41.4 per cent in nominal terms, more than double the 20.7 per cent gain in median worker pay over the same stretch.
Average median worker pay at these companies was just $36,571 in 2025, including part-time workers. That pay growth has even lagged behind the overall inflation rate of 25.9 per cent across those years, meaning workers are effectively earning less in real terms.
Sarah Anderson, who wrote the report and directs the Global Economic Project at the institute, says sky-high CEO pay has placed these executives 'on a remote economic planet from the rest of us.'
When you're at that level, it's really hard to fathom what it's like for people who have to worry about feeding their families, or even whether they're going to be able to come home to their family at the end of the day.
The report also highlights how these companies spent a combined $108.6 billion on stock buybacks in 2025 alone, a move that inflates share prices and boosts stock-based executive compensation.
