A new report released Thursday by Oxfam and the International Trade Union Confederation finds that while employee pay growth has stagnated, CEOs’ incomes continue to rise.
Oxfam says CEO pay in the U.S. has grown about 20 times faster than workers’ wages over the past year, based on an analysis of data from the S&P Capital IQ database, the Federal Reserve, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
After adjusting for inflation, average hourly wages for U.S. private sector workers increased by just 1.3% from 2024 to 2025, according to an Oxfam and ITUC analysis. By contrast, the earnings of the 384 S&P 500 CEOs for whom salary data is available increased 25.6% between 2024 and 2025.
According to a September 2025 report from the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs are paid an average of 281 times more than the average employee, meaning CEOs will earn an average of $22.98 million in 2024. This is up from 60 times just 35 years ago.
“What the data shows is that you can’t talk about the affordability crisis without talking about extreme inequality, particularly between CEO pay and employee pay,” Patricia Stottlemeyer, director of labor rights policy at Oxfam America, told CNBC Make It.
A majority of U.S. consumers (65%) say price increases are outpacing their income, according to a February J.D. Power survey.
Inflation rose to 3.3% in March from an annual rate of 2.4% in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and prices have risen by about 16% cumulatively over the past four years, according to the Consumer Price Index.
According to the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Quarterly Money Survey released in April, 56% of Americans say their daily living has become less affordable for their household in the past year, and 59% say they live paycheck to paycheck.
In addition to cutting back on discretionary spending (49%), tapping into savings (40%) and putting off major purchases (37%), the survey found that some Americans are looking for ways to increase their income. 30% have an additional job, side job, or part-time job. 29% are looking for a higher paying job. and 14% asked for a raise or higher salary.
Even after cutting spending, low-income people are still “struggling to make ends meet” in the current economic climate, Will Auchincloss, Americas retail leader at EY Parthenon, told CNBC Make It in December. Oxfam’s report found that the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by almost 21% since 2019, Stottlemeyer said.
In Stottlemeyer’s view, the current economic system is “designed to benefit this small group of ultra-rich people at the expense of working people.” Part of the solution, she says, is to raise the minimum wage and enact effective labor policies to “tax the super-rich.”
On Tuesday, a group of Democratic Congressional Democrats introduced the Living Wage for All Act. The bill would require all large employers (those with 500 or more employees nationwide or those with annual gross revenues of at least $1 billion) to raise the minimum wage to $25 by 2031. Small employers will be required to reach a minimum wage of $25 by 2038.
“The resources exist” to raise workers’ wages, Stottlemeyer said, “and it’s just policy choices that determine how we distribute the wealth that workers create.”
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