As the wealth gap continues to widen in our K-shaped economy, the gulf between workers and their CEOs is growing too. 

CEOs of companies on the S&P 500 make, on average, 312 times what their median worker is paid. 

On a subset of that list, though, the difference is even starker: When looking at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median workers pay, that ratio grows to 615 to 1, up from 566 to 1 in 2019.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive research organization, dubs those companies the “Low Wage 100.”

In a new report, called “Executive Excess,” IPS looks at how “Low Wage 100” CEOs are pulling in more money while their workers’ wages stagnant. 

Beyond that widening wealth gap, the report also highlights how such companies seem to turn a blind eye to government actions that harm their workers, from cuts to public benefit programs like Medicaid and SNAP to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement—which has targeted workers, sometimes, at their places of employment.

To Sarah Anderson, who authored the report and directs the Global Economic Project at the institute, those challenges facing workers are interconnected. 

Sky-high CEO pay has placed these executives “on a remote economic planet from the rest of us,” she says. “When you’re at that level, it’s really hard to fathom what it’s like for people who have to worry about feeding their families, or even whether they’re going to be able to come home to their family at the end of the day.”

“It underscores, for me, the need to tackle the extreme inequality within these companies,” she adds, “because you have the top leadership just so far, in distant galaxies from the rest of us, that it’s really undermining their ability to defend their workers even in times of extreme hardship.”

CEO compensation surges while worker pay lags

IPS releases its Executive Excess report annually, looking at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay.

Between 2019 and 2025, the report found, the average CEO compensation within that group of companies rose 41.4% in nominal (unadjusted for inflation) terms. The average median worker pay at those companies rose half that amount—20.7%—over the same time period. 

Average CEO compensation at such companies hit $17.5 million in 2025, while median worker pay was $36,571.

That median worker pay does include part-time workers; though corporations tried to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to annualize part-time pay, the SEC pushed back, and does not allow it. 

For workers at these low-wage companies, their nominal pay has even lagged behind U.S. inflation, the report notes: The inflation rate over those same years was 25.9%. 

(Calculating median worker pay in inflation-adjusted terms is a challenge, Anderson says, because that median pay is based on a company’s global workforce, and companies are not required to disclose where their workers are located.)

For CEOs, their compensation packages often include stocks, and companies bolster stock-based pay through stock buybacks. 

In 2025 alone, “Low-Wage 100” companies spent a combined $108.6 billion on stock buybacks, a move that inflates the price of company shares and so also inflates stock-based pay. 

That is money, IPS argues, that could instead be invested in workers, like via pay raises. 

Walmart, for example, was the top company in terms of buyback spending, with $8.1 billion in share repurchases. That could have funded a $3,851 bonus for each of the company’s 2.1 million employees, IPS calculated.

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Companies silent as public assistance is cut

The gap between CEO and worker pay has been a known issue for years, Anderson says. But what surprised her as she put together this year’s report were all the other challenges workers have been facing.

“When I took a step back and I thought about what has the last year been like for low-wage workers, what came to mind was the really historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits on which many of these low-wage workers rely, and then the wave of terror coming from the ICE surge that has targeted a lot of employees of these companies,” she says. 

Even more surprising, she adds, was how “the leaders of these companies have just stayed so silent in the face of what has really been a very challenging year.” 

Take Walmart again. Of the “Low-Wage 100”, the retailer has the largest number of employees on public assistance: 16,055 on Medicaid across six states, and 15,515 on SNAP across nine states. 

Yet Walmart executives did not publicly speak out against the cuts to those benefit programs in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, IPS says. 

The ​​National Retail Federation, of which Walmart (as well as other “Low-Wage 100 companies) is a member, actually voiced support for that bill. 

ICE enforcement and low-wage workers

These “Low-Wage 100” companies have political and economic power: Collectively, they have 1,282 registered federal lobbyists, who have supported policies like that bill, which also gave tax cuts to corporations.

Yet many haven’t spoken out against those benefit cuts—or, IPS adds, about situations involving ICE officers and their workers. 

Multiple DoorDash drivers, for example, have been arrested by ICE across the country, and in July 2026, an ICE agent in Maine fatally shot a driver (who was authorized to work in the U.S., and who was not the target of the agent’s arrest warrant).

Target, another “Low-Wage 100” company, has also seen ICE agents come into its retail stores: In January 2026 in a Minnesota store, ICE detained employees who were U.S. citizens, prompting protests.

Though the company later endorsed a letter from 60 CEOs calling for “deescalation” in Minnesota, Target did not comment on that specific incident. 

“If some of these very powerful CEOs had called a joint press conference and said ‘We’re not going to tolerate immigration officers going after our employees on our own property,’ it would have made such a difference to people over the past year to see them standing up for their workers,” Anderson says. 

DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment. A Target spokesperson confirmed that the company has no cooperative agreements with ICE.

A ‘precarious moment’ for America’s workforce

That corporations are not protecting workers from immigration enforcement or from cuts to public benefits is an example of the harms of inequality, Anderson says. 

“It does reflect how this extreme inequality is not just bad for workers, it’s really a problem for our whole society when we have these extreme divisions, and it also can’t be good for businesses in the long term too,” she says. 

IPS supports policy changes that would rein in stock buybacks and increase taxes on companies with certain CEO-to-workers pay rations. 

Separate from policies, though, she says corporations could be doing more voluntarily to help their workers. 

“We’re in a precarious moment in our country, and it would be great to see corporate leaders stepping up and defending people’s basic rights and doing what they can to make sure that people can cover their basic needs,” she says.

“That’s what we need for a healthy democracy economy,” Anderson adds, “and it would be good for these businesses themselves to have a workforce that is not living in such extreme insecurity.”