Wage Gap, Indeed: US CEOs Make 335 Times More Than the Average Worker

A new study has found that chief executive officers of large American corporations make an average of 335 times more than those who work for them.

The annual report from the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, found that the average production worker in a nonsupervisory position made roughly $36,900 in 2015, up from $36,000 in 2014. CEOs on the other hand, made an average of $12.4 million last year, down from a $13.5 million average the prior year.

"The income inequality that exists in this country is a disgrace," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

As Press TV reports, in 1980, an S&P 500 CEO made 42 times what a rank-and-file worker made, by 1990 they were making 107 times more, and now it has grown to a factor of over 335 — meaning that the rate at which the wage gap is widening

In the United States, worker pay has been stagnant for over three decades, as wages have not kept pace with inflation.

“Between 1979 and 2007, paycheck income of the top 1 percent of US earners exploded by over 256 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent of earners have seen little change in their average income, with just a 16.7 percent increase from 1979 to 2014,” according to a report from Inequality.org.

Meanwhile, advances in technology have meant that productivity has consistently risen.

“Productivity has increased at a relatively consistent rate since 1948. But the wages of American workers have not, since the 1970s, kept up with this rising productivity. Worker hourly compensation has flat-lined since the mid-1970s, increasing just 15.5 percent from 1979 to 2013, while worker productivity has increased 132.8 percent over the same time period,” the report states.

Beginning next year, publicly-owned companies will be required to reveal the ratio of how much their CEOs earn versus the average income of employees, following new US Securities and Exchange Commission rules.