'Overpaid CEO' List Includes Companies With Big Footprints In New Jersey

At a time when many of their workers are struggling to keep food on the table for their families, some of the nation’s largest corporations are focused on making their “overpaid CEOs” even richer, a new report claims.

The Institute for Policy Studies recently released its annual Executive Excess list for 2025, which takes a look at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay.

The left-leaning think tank compared CEO and worker pay trends going back to 2019 for this year’s report, which also incorporates data on stock buybacks and capital improvement investments. View the full list at the bottom of this article, and see its methodology online here.

The report named several companies with heavy New Jersey footprints that have seen major labor disputes over the past few years, including Starbucks and Amazon. Other companies with New Jersey ties that were named in the report included Ralph Lauren, which opened a new corporate office in the state a few years ago, and which had a 539-to-1 pay gap in 2024.

• See Related: NJ Starbucks Union Members Protest Pay, Working Conditions
• See Related: NJ Warehouse Workers Say Amazon Jobs Are 'Unsafe, Grueling'

Average CEO compensation within the so-called “Low-Wage 100” hit $17.2 million in 2024. The group’s average median worker pay came in at $35,570.

Some of the largest CEO-to-worker pay gaps were seen at the following companies in 2024, researchers said:

• Starbucks – 6,666 to 1 (CEO: Brian Niccol)
• ON Semiconductor – 1,998 to 1 (CEO: Hassane El-Khoury)
• Ross Stores – 1,770 to 1 (CEO: Barbara Rentler)
• Western Digital – 1,649 to 1 (CEO: David Goeckeler)
• TJX – 1,565 to 1 (CEO: Ernie Herrman)
• Yum Brands – 1,440 to 1 (CEO: David Gibbs)
• Ulta Beauty – 1,130 to 1 (CEO: David Kimbell)
• Live Nation Entertainment – 1,063 to 1 (CEO: Michael Rapino)
• Williams Sonoma – 1,062 to 1 (CEO: Laura Alber)
• Seagate Technology – 1,045 to 1 (CEO: William Mosley)
• Royal Caribbean – 1,037 to 1 (CEO: Jason Liberty)
• McDonald's – 1,014 to 1 (CEO: Christopher Kempczinski)

As a group, these CEOs are currently earning 632 times more than their median employees – and when inflation enters the picture, the numbers look even worse, the report claims.

“Between 2019 and 2024, average CEO compensation within this group rose 34.7 percent in nominal — unadjusted for inflation — terms, more than double the 16.3 percent increase in these firms’ average median worker pay,” researchers said.

The U.S. inflation rate over this same period? About 22.6 percent.

STOCK BUYBACKS AND CORPORATE TAXES

The gap between CEO compensation and median worker pay at Starbucks hit a staggering 6,666 to 1 last year, said the report’s author, Sarah Anderson.

“It’s not for lack of cash,” Anderson continued. “Between 2019 and 2024, these firms spent a combined $644 billion on stock buybacks. This once-illegal financial maneuver artificially inflates the value of a company’s stock — and with it, CEO pay.”

At Lowe’s – where the median worker pay was $30,606 last year – every one of their 273,000 employees could’ve gotten an annual $28,456 bonus over the past six years with the money the retailer spent on stock buybacks, the study found. Likewise, McDonald’s could have given all their employees an extra $18,338 per year – more than the company’s median wage – if it spent its buyback outlays on worker bonuses during this period.

• See Related: Major Airline Sees Blowback Over $1.5 Billion Stock Buyback Plan
• See Related: Bed Bath And Buybacks: US Senators Push Company On Severance Pay

“As poll after poll after poll has shown, Americans across the political spectrum are fed up with overpaid CEOs and want government action,” Anderson charged.

How? There are plenty of ways, Anderson suggested:

“They could increase taxes on corporations with huge CEO-worker pay gaps. Polls suggest this would be enormously popular. In one survey of likely voters, 89 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents, and 71 percent of Republicans said they’d like to see tax hikes on companies that pay their CEOs more than 50 times what they pay their median employees. Congress could also increase the 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks that went into effect in 2023. If that tax had been set at 4 percent, the ‘Low-Wage 100’ would have owed approximately $6.3 billion in additional federal taxes on their share repurchases during the past two years. That revenue would’ve been enough to cover the cost of 327,218 public housing units for two years.”

Other advocacy groups have also claimed there is a severely lopsided playing field when it comes to the earnings of the nation’s richest and poorest residents.

One Fair Wage, a national campaign to create a “full and fair” minimum wage for tipped workers, recently released a report that found 67 million workers across the United States – nearly half the nation’s workforce – is earning less than $25 an hour.

“The shocking truth is that half of America cannot afford to live in America,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage.

• See Related: NJ Raises Minimum Wage To $15 – But It Still Isn’t Enough To Live On
• See Related: New Corporate Tax Will Raise $789M For NJ Transit, Latest Budget Shows

The following chart is reposted courtesy of the Institute for Policy Studies

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