CEO pay: Your chief executive makes 380 times what you earn
A supporter of The Occupy London protest group stands outside The High Court on January 18, 2012 in London, England.
What's behind the Occupy Wall Street movement across the US and around the world?
Numbers like this one:
According to a new report by the AFL-CIO, the average CEO at companies in the S&P 500 earned an average of $12.9 million dollars last year.
That's 380 times more than the average worker.
That total CEO pay figure includes salary, bonus, stock and option awards and other corner office perks.
Back in 1980, CEOs made 42 times what the average worker earned.
So you might be asking right about now: surely CEOs must be doing a great job to get so much more money?
Right?
Well, not exactly.
Here's the AFL-CIO's response to your question:
"CEOs supposedly deserve all this money for increasing shareholder value. However, while the average CEO pay increased 13.9 percent at S&P 500 Index companies in 2011, the S&P 500 Index ended the year at the same level as it started."
And here are the dirty details of the latest trends in CEO pay, which the group analyzes each year.
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