Written by Michael Moon, GEI Associate
For the first time ever, the median compensation for CEOs surpassed the $10 million mark in 2013, according to The Associated Press.
The Associated Press conducted its annual survey of CEO compensation using data provided by Equilar, a California-based company that provides information about total executive compensation packages at publicly traded companies and nonprofit organizations. Equilar looked at 337 companies in S&P 500 that filed regulatory filings by April 30. Combining the salary, bonus, perks, stock awards, stock option awards and other pay components for each the 337 CEOs, Equilar calculated the median CEO compensation in 2013 to be $10.5 million. This is a 8.2% increase from 2012, when the median CEO pay was $9.7 million, thanks to continuously increasing prices of stocks.
Here are the median total CEO compensations over the last decade:
And here are the U.S. median household income data over the same time period:
Note that the median CEO compensation has been steadily rising since 2009 while the median household income has fallen each year since 2007. Income inequality is indeed a significant problem in the United States, where there is a trend of widening income gap between the top part and the rest of the income ladder. These circumstances make it difficult to be optimistic about the median household income in 2013, which will be released in September 2014.