CEOs’ rigged economy

From Tesla to Starbucks, executives are pocketing more and more of the profits created by working peoples’ labor

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 25, 2026) — 4.23 seconds. That’s how long it took Elon Musk to make a median Tesla worker’s pay in 2025, per a new report from the AFL-CIO.

The Executive Paywatch report digs into the widening gap between what workers earn and CEOs take from some of the largest companies in the U.S. The most recent edition, examining data from 2025, indicates that CEO compensation continues to rise, increasing from an average of $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025, even as management decisions and “market trends” see thousands of workers losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

But that figure actually excludes one of the biggest offenders: Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk.

Musk, the world’s most overpaid man first trillionaire, received such high compensation from Tesla in 2025 that his data point throws the average CEO to worker pay ratio into the stratosphere. Including Musk, the CEO to worker pay ratio was 5,387-to-1 in 2025. His pay is 14 times higher than the total compensation of all other S&P 500 company CEOs combined, according to the report.

Graphics: AFL-CIO

While Musk’s pay in comparison to Tesla’s workers is particularly egregious, the data shows that he is just the most extreme case of a widespread trend. Excluding his Tesla pay package, CEO pay still increased significantly between 2024 and 2025, from 285-to-1 in 2024 to 312-to-1 in 2025.

Of companies headquartered in Washington state, Starbucks is by far the worst offender, with a CEO to worker pay ratio of 1,794-to-1. In fact, the company has the fifth highest pay disparity of any S&P 500 company in the Paywatch report. Meanwhile, Starbucks executives have continued to stonewall settling a fair contract; Starbucks Workers United estimates their economic proposals would cost the company only about one day’s sales. And those economic proposals are modest, like a $17 an hour minimum wage.

Microsoft also has sizable imbalance in CEO and worker pay. There the ratio is 480-to-1, the third highest in Washington state. Microsoft laid off more than 9,000 workers in 2025 and executives at Microsoft-owned XBOX studios recently announced layoffs of more than 3,000 workers, 1,600 of whom have already lost their jobs. These layoffs are justified by management as necessary to “reset” the company. Like Starbucks, the company has stalled out negotiations on first collective bargaining agreements for XBOX workers.

Alaska Air Group — recently in the news for understaffing flight services — has a CEO to worker pay ratio of 117:1.

It’s not just CEOs cashing in. The Executive Paywatch report also digs into the President’s rapidly-growing wealth — $2.2 billion in income in 2025, nearly 254% more than 2024 when he was not in office.

“Trump’s 2025 receipts included $1.4 billion from the sale of $TRUMP memecoins and World Liberty Financial, his family’s cryptocurrency business,” per the report.

To put it bluntly: “The median U.S. worker would need to work 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in 2025.”

You know what they say about birds of a feather — they rig the economy together.