The remuneration differences between CEOs and employees are constantly widening – Liberation
In an hour, the leaders of hundreds of large companies in the world will have gathered as much money as what employees will have earned in … a year. This gap continues to widen, the remuneration of CEOs having increased by 50 % since 2019, 56 times more than employee wages. In an analysis published on the occasion of May 1, International Workers’ Day, the NGO Oxfam crossed the data from 1984 companies in 35 countries (excluding China, including a sample of 18 groups in France), where the CEO’s remuneration exceeded 1 million dollars last year (including bonuses and stock options), according to information from the S&P Capital IQ In these countries at the same period provided by the International Labor Organization.
The median remuneration of CEOs worldwide reached $ 4.3 million (3.8 million euros) in 2024, when, in 2019, it was $ 2.9 million (corrected for inflation). This increase, underlines Oxfam, « Getting the increase in the real average wages of employees which was barely 0.9 % during the same period in countries where data relating to CEOs are available. » A fracture denounced by Amitabh Behar, the director general of Oxfam International in a press release: “Year after year, we are witnessing the same grotesque show: the remuneration of CEOs explodes while the salary of employees stagnates almost. This is not an anomaly, this phenomenon is systemic. ”
The wage inequalities between men and women are also persistent. Still on this same world sample, not only are women rare to lead these large companies – they represent only 5.7 % of CEOs -, but employees in these countries are paid on average 16.7 % less than their male colleagues in 2023.
France is no exception to these growing deviations. Two years ago, Oxfam already noted That out of 100 large French companies, the remuneration of managers were on average 97 times higher than those of their employees. In its annual study on the same subject published in November, the Proxinvest firm calculated that the difference between the average emoluments of employees of CAC 40 groups and those of their leaders had almost never been as marked as in 2023 (except in 2021). This « equity ratio » reached 94, when it was 74 in 2014. Without the shareholders finding it much to complain about.
While the general assemblies (AG) season is in full swing, those during which the ever more astronomical remuneration of the bosses are disputed are not so frequent. On April 14, Stellantis shareholders were, for example, to decide on the report of the remuneration committee which was submitted to them during the AG of the automaker in difficulty in Amsterdam. This text contained in particular the remuneration of Carlos Tavares, its former director general, under 2024 (23.1 million euros), its bonus (10 million) and its starting allowance (2 million). Only a third of them voted against.
