Employees’ financial stress is an increasingly critical target for HR and benefits leaders, driving disruptions to productivity, focus and even retention—all of which could be exacerbated as CEO pay continues to skyrocket.
New reporting from Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation found a significant gap in the wage growth between top executives and individual contributors. The average salary for CEOs in the S&P 500 grew 25.6% between 2024-25, while American workers’ average hourly wage only increased by about 1.3% in that same timeframe; globally, CEO pay grew about 11% and worker wages by about .5%.
Overall, CEO pay jumped about 20 times faster than worker pay. Put in perspective, the report says, it would take the average employee almost 500 years to make what one of the S&P CEOs made just last year.
The research comes as employee financial stress soars, and some companies come under fire for shifting business priorities that have led to new executive investments amid employee layoffs.
For instance, Oracle hired a new CFO with a nearly $30 million annual compensation package—just days after it laid off tens of thousands of employees.
See also: CEO pay is continuing to skyrocket: Do employees care?
Patricia Stottlemyer, labor rights policy lead for Oxford America, told CNBC that the gap highlights “extreme inequality” between CEO and worker pay, which needs to be part of ongoing conversations about employee financial wellness.
Recent research from Valoir finds that almost 80% of surveyed employees cite financial wellbeing as at least a moderate source of stress. More than 30% say financial stress is damaging their mental or physical health, a figure that climbs even higher for more financially strapped workers.
It’s not just employees who are suffering: The report found that financial stress is dragging down productivity by about 8%, on average.
“The growing chasm between CEO compensation and average worker pay,” Oxfam researchers wrote, “is part of a long-term trend in which executives and shareholders are capturing an ever-larger slice of the global economic pie.”
When corporations and CEOs consolidate “power and ownership,” they write, it can undermine “democracy and workers’ rights.”
Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar advocates for governments capping CEO pay, fairly taxing the “super-rich” and ensuring minimum wages “at the very least” keep pace with inflation.
“And workers must be able to exercise, without fear or obstruction, their rights to organize, to strike and to bargain collectively,” Behar says. “They are the ones who generate society’s wealth; they should be able to claim, as a matter of justice, what they are due.”
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