CEOs at the Lowest-Paying S&P 500 Firms Earn 614 Times Their Workers, Report Finds

The average CEO at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay earned 614 times more than their average employee in 2025, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released August 27, 2026. Average CEO compensation at these firms reached $17.5 million, while median worker pay stood at $36,571.

The gap has widened steadily. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation at these 100 firms rose 41.4% before adjusting for inflation, more than double the 20.7% increase in median worker pay over the same period. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio grew 8.4% across those six years. Inflation, however, rose 25.9% between 2019 and 2025, meaning worker pay increases at these firms did not keep pace with the cost of living.

The IPS report, led by Sarah Anderson, director of the think tank's Global Economy Project, tracks what it calls the "Low-Wage 100" — the S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker compensation. The findings build on a body of research documenting widening executive pay disparities. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported that the economy-wide CEO-to-worker compensation ratio stood at 281-to-1 in 2024. A 2022 IPS analysis of 300 top US companies found CEOs earning an average of $10.6 million against median worker pay of $23,968. The trajectory of the Low-Wage 100 has been consistent: an earlier IPS report found the ratio widening 12.9% from 560-to-1 in 2019 to 632-to-1 in 2024, with average CEO pay climbing 34.7% over that five-year span versus a 16.3% rise in worker pay.

Walmart illustrates the extremes within the dataset. CEO Doug McMillan, who stepped down in January 2026, received $29.2 million in 2025 compensation, 958 times the company's median worker pay of $30,520. Walmart also led the Low-Wage 100 in stock buyback spending at $8.1 billion. A stock buyback is when a company uses its cash to repurchase its own shares from the open market, which tends to lift the share price and benefit investors. That $8.1 billion is equivalent to a $3,851 bonus for each of Walmart's 2.1 million workers.

Across the 100 firms, stock buybacks rose to $108.6 billion in 2025 from $105 billion in 2024, bringing the cumulative total to $718 billion between 2019 and 2025. The same companies collectively employ 1,282 registered federal lobbyists.

At least 36 billionaires are linked to the Low-Wage 100, including the eight members of the Walton family at Walmart, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott, and Carvana co-founders Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III.

The IPS report proposes three principal policy remedies. First, a tax hike on corporations whose CEOs earn more than 50 times their median employee pay. Second, an increase in the stock buyback excise tax — a currently modest 1% levy on share repurchases. Third, leveraging government contracting and subsidy arrangements to bar federal contractors from conducting stock buybacks. These measures are presented as prescriptions, not enacted legislation.

The broader context here matters for understanding the numbers. The Low-Wage 100 data captures a specific cohort: the bottom fifth of S&P 500 firms ranked by median worker pay, not the broad economy. The EPI's 281-to-1 economy-wide ratio for 2024 provides a benchmark against which the Low-Wage 100 figure of 614-to-1 for 2025 stands in sharp relief. That divergence between the two metrics signals that the pay gap concentrates most acutely at firms already paying the lowest wages — a pattern with direct implications for any legislative approach that tries to use the tax code to address CEO pay ratios.

The buyback dimension adds another layer worth considering. The $718 billion deployed on share repurchases by the Low-Wage 100 over six years is capital that went to shareholders rather than to wage increases. The IPS framing invites policymakers to weigh whether the current 1% buyback excise tax works as an effective deterrent or amounts to a negligible friction cost. Walmart's $8.1 billion in buybacks, set against a median worker wage of $30,520, gives the proposal concrete arithmetic.

Whether any of the three policy prescriptions gains legislative traction is uncertain. What the data establishes is the scale and consistency of the divergence, and the specific mechanisms through which these 100 firms simultaneously keep labor costs low, reward shareholders, and maintain active lobbying presences in Washington.