Did you know that together, the top 15 highest paid U.S. CEOs earn over $85 billion in salary and other rewards and benefits each year?
Did you know that the top 15 CEOs each earn over $40 million per year, and the highest paid CEO in the U.S., John H. Hammergren of McKesson, earns over $131 million per year.
Imagine if those CEOs each donated one year of their earnings. Imagine if they refused those outrageous compensation packages, and instead, the companies used that money to improve employee pay for everyone else? Imagine how many more people could be hired if CEO pay went down to something even remotely reasonable.
Pay for performance is fine, but it takes more than a CEO to improve revenues each year. You wouldn’t know it by the data in the “It Pays to be the Boss” infographic from Bolt Insurance below.
If the data is accurate, the average U.S. CEO pay in 2011 was $3,247,000, which is down from a high of $3,889,000 in 2007. However, 22 years earlier, average CEO compensation was less than half of today’s average, coming in at just $1,541,000.
Via: BOLT Insurance
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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Here is where Susan Gunelius provides the world’s best perspective on business excellence tempered by the essence of altruism, synergy, and collaboration. How many years since Ted Turner donated one third of his fortune to the UN? How many have done that? Too often pseudo–philanthropy masquerades as the real thing, and over compensated CEOs’ cumulative wealth amounts to money burning–an economic policy– that hurts the poor! If you want to stay on the cutting edge of business you can read and learn from Susan, like I do, and you will discover why Susan Gunelius is ranked number 1.
That is insane. Do we really need to have a CEO making $112,000,000?
The first word that comes to my mind is, “obscene”. I am ok with CEO’s making a lot of money, but when it gets to this level, it is at the expense of their employees.
Thank you, Jim!
You’re welcome, Susan! Learning from you is pure joy!
I see this issue as a huge lapse in common sense and decensy, to put it gently. Why would it be considered acceptable to have such a huge financial chasm between CEO’s and employees? This only makes the employees feel resentful, unappreciated, and often embarrassed that they are working for a company that is so lacking in judgement. Greed is not a good marketing strategy, and not a moral booster. These employees are the ones working to keep the company afloat, or even causing it to thrive, to pay them low wages, while paying the top managememt ridiculous salaries will only, eventually, undermine the companies credibility and reputation. Greed is not attractive to consumers.