CEO Pay Calculator

The calculator answers a single question: how many years would you need to work at your current salary to match what the chief executive earned last year? That number is mechanical division of two real figures — the CEO's reported total compensation from the most recent proxy statement, and your salary. The headline figure for each CEO is the “Total” column from the Summary Compensation Table in Form DEF 14A on SEC EDGAR, the federal database of corporate disclosures. That figure rolls up base salary, cash bonus, stock awards (typically RSUs and performance share units valued at grant date), option awards, non-equity incentive plan payouts, pension and deferred-comp changes, and a catch-all for perks.

What the calculator does not tell you: whether the pay was deserved. A large package at a fast-growing company that vastly outperformed its peers can be defensible; the same package at a company with declining revenue and a failed say-on-pay vote is a different story. To form your own view, read the source proxy: every figure here links to the company profile and its DEF 14A on SEC EDGAR. See our methodology for how the disclosed total is sourced.

CEO pay at large U.S. public companies has grown roughly 1,000% since 1978 in inflation-adjusted terms, while typical worker pay has grown about 15% over the same period — figures published annually by the Economic Policy Institute. The single biggest driver is the shift from cash to equity. Stock awards now make up 50% to 70% of typical S&P 500 CEO compensation, so years when the broad market rises also produce surging headline pay numbers — even when company-specific performance is unremarkable.

Two proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, evaluate every public company's pay program against peer benchmarks and recommend how institutional investors should vote on say-on-pay. Their recommendations carry enormous weight: an “against” from ISS typically reduces shareholder support by 20-30 percentage points, which is why companies frequently restructure pay after a failed vote.

Across the 22 industries tracked here, the spread in median CEO compensation is wide. Tech, financial services, and pharmaceuticals tend to cluster at the top because equity grants are large and stock prices have appreciated. Utilities and consumer staples typically run lower because pay packages are more cash-weighted and stock-price upside is constrained by regulation. Comparing a CEO to peers in the same industry is more informative than comparing across sectors — a $25M package may be top-quartile in one industry and middle-of-the-pack in another. The site's industry pages show average and median SEC-disclosed CEO compensation for each peer group.

For more on how the components of CEO pay fit together, read How CEO Pay Works, Stock Options vs RSUs, and How to Read a Proxy Statement.