CEO Pay Up, Worker Wages Down

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

CEO pay is rising at an astronomical pace while workers' wages are dropping or stagnating, according to new reports. The average CEO made 431 times the salary of a production worker in 2004, up from 301-to-1 in 2003 and 24-to-1 in the mid-1960s, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. While CEOs get richer, workers are producing more and taking home less pay. Worker productivity increased 4.7 percent during the third quarter of 2005, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, while real hourly wages and benefits decreased by 1.4 percent, compared with an even higher 3.1 percent decrease in the previous quarter. Click here for more information and to see how CEO pay has been growing at the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch website.