10 Fortune 500 companies with the biggest wage gaps between employees and CEOs

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Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

If you feel good about your financial picture despite inflation, high gas prices and pandemic economic stress, you might just be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

In 2020, CEOs of top U.S. firms made approximately $24.2 million on average, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s six times more than the highest wage workers in the top 0.1% and 351 times more than a typical worker — an 18.5% growth in earnings that only happened in the last year.

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A 2019 Institute for Policy Studies report estimated that 80% of S&P 500 companies pay their CEO over 100 times more than they pay their median worker, meaning it would take approximately 100 years for the average employee at one of these companies to earn what their CEO makes in a year.

Career insight platform Lensa analyzed Fortune Global 500 companies to reveal the biggest pay discrepancies between employees and CEOs. Here are the top 10 Fortune 500 companies with the largest gaps:

HP

CEO: $12,479,815
Median employee: $92,900

Chevron

CEO: $17,601,695
Median employee: $107,000

Merck

CEO: $19,799,788
Median employee: $103,000

Cisco

CEO: $25,446,695
Median employee: $110,000

Intel

CEO: $22,389,500
Median employee: $101,000

Goldman Sachs

CEO: $17,500,000
Median employee: $93,100

Exelon

CEO: $14,405,049
Median employee: $91,300

American Express

CEO: $23,700,000
Median employee: $87,800

Microsoft

CEO: $49,858,280
Median employee: $120,000

Pfizer

CEO: $19,665,790
Median employee: $83,700
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