Public Employee Press

The World of Work

CEO pay soars

CEO pay continues to blast into the stratosphere while workers struggle with stagnating and falling wages. In 2004, the chief executives of U.S. companies were rewarded with double-digit raises despite the recent years of falling prices, declining stock share prices and corporate scandals.

The average CEO of a major corporation earned $9.84 million in 2004, according to this year’s AFL-CIO Executive Pay Watch study. The typical CEO received an 11.3 percent pay increase while the average worker with a salary of $33,176 won a paltry hike of 2.9 percent.

In the first quarter of this year, real wages — adjusted for inflation — fell at their fastest rate in 14 years. During the three months, the cost of living inflation rose 3.1 percent, but salaries only went up 2.4 percent.