CEO Pay Hits $17.7M Median as Musk's Package Tops $132B
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- S&P 500 CEOs saw median compensation rise nearly 6% to $17.7 million in 2025, while the median employee at those companies earned $89,744 — a 4.7% raise that outpaced inflation but still left many workers feeling pinched and running up credit card debt for basic necessities.
- Elon Musk's Tesla compensation package was valued at $132.3 billion, entirely in stock awards contingent on hitting 10-year targets for market value, EV production, a robotaxi fleet, and an army of humanoid robots; Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
- The pay ratio widened to extremes: at half the surveyed companies it would take the median worker 200 years to earn what the CEO made in one year, up from 192 years in 2024, with Coca-Cola's CEO earning 1,739x median worker pay ($17,947) and TJX Cos.'s CEO hitting a 1,774-to-1 ratio.
- Jane Fraser of Citigroup received $95.8 million — the highest compensation ever for a woman CEO in the survey's history — including a $25 million restricted-stock award after being elected chairman and overseeing a wholesale reorganization that included laying off thousands of workers.
- David Zaslav earned $165 million at Warner Bros. after orchestrating the company's $31-per-share sale to Paramount Skydance; his total compensation since becoming CEO in 2007 now reaches $1.1 billion according to Equilar data.
- Wells Fargo gave CEO Charles Scharf $94.5 million after the bank was finally released last year from federal asset-cap restrictions tied to its fake-accounts scandal, rewarding his years-long cleanup effort.
- Warren Buffett earned just $389,488 in his final year as Berkshire Hathaway CEO — down 4% from the prior year — a striking contrast to the performance-stock-loaded packages dominating the rest of the survey.
Why it matters: Boards are loading CEO pay with long-dated stock awards tied to performance targets, pushing the typical worker-to-CEO pay gap to 200 years and fueling ballot initiatives in San Francisco and Los Angeles to tax companies with extreme CEO-to-worker pay ratios. For workers, the 4.7% median raise technically beat 2025 inflation, but the ratio data shows the compensation gap is widening, not closing.
