CEO Pay Remains Egregiously High as Corporations Move to Implement AI, Displace Workers

As CEOs rush to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) in their businesses in ways that can hurt workers and drive inequality, executive pay remains unacceptably high, according to this year’s AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch website paywatch.org. In 2022, the average CEO-to-worker-pay ratio of companies in the S&P 500 Index was 272-to-1.

“The choice about how we use AI is before us right now. Will AI be used to enrich corporate CEOs and tech billionaires? Or will the productivity gains of AI be shared with working people to make our jobs easier and raise living standards?” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond during a press conference for the website’s release. “Performers are being asked to sign away the rights to their own likeness as a condition of employment so that the studios can add to their profits by digitally creating new content without them. Writers not writing. Actors not acting. And their fight is our fight.”

Average S&P 500 Index CEO compensation was $16.7 million in 2022—the second-highest level of executive pay in history—and data shows that over the past decade, CEO pay increased by $5 million. Assuming a 45-year career, S&P 500 Index company employees would need to work more than five lifetimes to make what the average CEO receives in just one year. Click here to read more at paywatch.org!