CEOs got raises bigger than your annual salary, and they're not happy

Last year saw the smallest increase in CEO pay since 2015, following 17% pay increases in 2021. To put it another way, the average pay of S&P 500 CEOs rose last year by substantially more than the average annual pay of workers at those companies. The chief executives at those companies got a median of $14.8 million in compensation in 2022, the AP reports. At that pay level, their 0.9% raise was over $130,000. Compare that with what the average worker in the U.S. makes in an entire year.

But it’s the smallest increase these CEOs have gotten in years: Between 1978 and 2020, compensation for the CEOs at the largest public firms shot up by 1,322%, so 0.9% is a major comedown. Break out the tiny violins for the most mournful dirge you know, right? Multimillionaire CEOs had such a hard year in 2022. Private sector workers across the board got a higher percentage pay raise than CEOs—and even if it still didn’t keep up with inflation, things just aren’t supposed to happen that way in the United States economy of the past 50 years.