Updated April 2026 · SEC Item 402(u) data
Worst CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios, 2024
The 200 U.S. public companies with the largest disclosed gap between CEO total compensation and median worker pay, ranked by Item 402(u) ratio. The top 10 average a 513:1 ratio, with average CEO compensation of $20.9M. Pay-ratio disclosure has been required since 2018 under Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act.
What Drives a 1,000:1 Pay Ratio
Pay ratio is dominated by workforce composition rather than CEO pay level. A retailer with 500,000 part-time hourly cashiers reports a median worker compensation of $20,000–$30,000 because the SEC requires the median to be computed across all employees (other than the CEO) regardless of full-time status. The same retailer's CEO might earn the same $20M as a similarly-revenue financial services CEO, but the ratio comes out 6× higher because the bank's median employee is a $150K-earning analyst rather than a $25K-earning sales associate. Both ratios are real disclosures of real pay structures — they just measure two different things.
That said, ratio comparisons within an industry are highly informative. When two retailers of similar size report ratios of 1,200:1 and 600:1, the gap usually reflects either a meaningful difference in CEO pay structure (one had a special multi-year mega-grant, the other did not) or a meaningful difference in workforce composition (one employs more full-time staff, the other more part-time). Both readings are encoded in the underlying Item 402(u) disclosure, which requires companies to describe how they identified the median employee.
Authoritative context: the long-run CEO-to-worker pay-ratio time series is published by the Economic Policy Institute, which estimates that the ratio for the largest U.S. public companies has risen from roughly 20:1 in 1965 to several hundred-to-one today. Every ratio reported on this page is the company's own disclosure under SEC rules, available on the SEC EDGAR system.
Top 200 Largest Pay Ratios
How These Ratios Are Calculated
Each ratio comes directly from the company's own Item 402(u) disclosure inside its DEF 14A proxy statement. The numerator is CEO total compensation as reported in the Summary Compensation Table; the denominator is the median annual total compensation of all employees other than the CEO, computed using a methodology the company is required to describe in the proxy. CEOPayWatch does not recompute either number — we surface the company's own disclosure, link it to the underlying filing on SEC EDGAR, and rank by the disclosed ratio. The Pay-for-Performance Grade in the rightmost column blends this ratio (15% weight, peer-relative) with three other factors documented at methodology.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the CEO-to-worker pay ratio?
The CEO pay ratio is the ratio of CEO total compensation to the median annual total compensation of all employees other than the CEO. It has been required disclosure for U.S. public companies since 2018, under SEC Regulation S-K Item 402(u), implementing Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. A 1,000:1 ratio means the CEO earns 1,000 times what the median employee earned in the same fiscal year.
Why are some pay ratios above 1,000:1?
The single biggest driver is workforce composition. Retail, hospitality, and food-service companies that employ large numbers of part-time hourly workers report median worker pay as low as $10,000–$30,000, which mathematically inflates the ratio even when CEO pay is in the typical S&P 500 range. Companies with mostly full-time salaried professionals (financial services, technology, biotech) report median worker pay above $100,000 and ratios well below 200:1. In this ranking, 1 of the listed companies report a ratio at or above 1,000:1.
How do companies determine the "median employee"?
SEC Item 402(u) gives companies discretion in identifying the median employee. They can use total compensation, base salary, W-2 wages, or any consistently applied metric, and they can use statistical sampling rather than computing every employee's pay. Once identified, the median employee's actual total compensation (including all elements that go into CEO total comp) is computed. Companies must update the median employee at least every three years. The flexibility is why two superficially similar companies can report very different pay ratios.
Is a high pay ratio illegal?
No. The pay-ratio rule is purely a disclosure requirement — companies must report the ratio in their proxy statement, but there is no legal cap. The disclosure is intended to give shareholders, employees, and regulators visibility into compensation gaps so they can use that information in say-on-pay votes, collective bargaining, and policy debates. Companies on this list are complying with SEC rules; the ratios are large because of how their workforces are structured, not because of any rule violation.
How does a high pay ratio affect a company's Pay-for-Performance Grade?
The CEO-to-worker ratio versus industry peers is one of four factors in the Pay-for-Performance Grade, weighted at 15%. The grade penalizes companies whose ratio runs materially above the sector average — not the absolute ratio. A 900:1 ratio at a retail company can still earn a B if it sits below the retail-sector median, while a 250:1 ratio at a financial services firm can earn an F if it runs well above the sector. The full input weights are documented at /methodology.
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, DEF 14A Item 402(u) pay-ratio disclosures via EDGAR. Public domain.
Last updated 2026-04-06 · 200 companies ranked.