For the period 1978–2017, CEO compensation based on options realized increased about 1,070 percent—more than 60 percent faster than stock market growth (either the Dow Jones or S&P 500) and substantially faster than the painfully slow 11.2 percent growth in the typical worker’s compensation over the same period. CEO compensation based on the value of stock options granted grew 979 percent over this period. CEO rewards have outstripped both stock prices and corporate profits, EPI found. The rise came after the bosses of America’s largest companies got an average pay rise of 17.6% in 2017, taking home an average of $18.9m in compensation while their employees’ wages stalled, rising just 0.3% over the year. Last year, McDonald’s boss Steve Easterbrook earned $21.7m while the McDonald’s workers earned a median wage of just $7,017 – a CEO to worker pay ratio of 3,101 to one. In 1965 the ratio of CEO to worker pay was 20 to one; that figure had risen to 58 to one by in 1989 and peaked in 2000 when CEOs earned 344 times the wage of their average worker. “As a mathematical matter, had there not been the redistribution upward – to the top 5%, but which is mostly about to the top 1% – the wages of the bottom 90% could have grown twice as fast as it actually did.” The bosses of large firms now earn 5.5 times as much as the average earner in the top 0.1%. Clifford (2017) describes the Lake Wobegon world of setting CEO compensation that fuels its growth: Every firm wants to believe its CEO is above average and therefore needs to be correspondingly remunerated. The compensation bonanza was driven by stock-related components of CEO compensation such as stock awards or the opportunity to cash in stock options, said Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. Astronomical gap between the pay of workers and bosses exposed in report on earnings of America’s top 350 CEOs 
 
 The chief executives of America’s top 350 companies earned 312 times more than their workers on average last year, according to a new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. CEO Pay Remains High Relative to the Pay of Typical Workers and High-Wage Earners. “Wages Rose for the Bottom 90 Percent in 2016 as Those for Top 1 Percent Fell.” Working Economics (Economic Policy Institute blog), October 31, 2017. The astronomical gap between the remuneration of workers and bosses has been brought into sharper focus by a new financial disclosure rule that forces companies to publish the ratio of CEO to worker pay.
– For every dollar made by the average Facebook employee, Mark Zuckerberg earned $37 in 2017. As far as CEO pay goes, that's nothing. The CEOs of America's top 350 publicly held companies earned an average of $18.9 million in wages, bonuses, and stock options last year, or 312 times more than their workers, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Per the Guardian, such an "astronomical gap" hasn't been seen since the eve of the 2007 financial crisis. The 17.6% increase in average CEO pay, compared to 0.3% for workers, had a lot to do with a booming stock market, but it's also part of a larger trend. Since 2009, average CEO pay has risen 72%, compared to about 2% for workers, who now make $54,600 on average. "It speaks to the degree the economic recovery is unbalanced," report co-author Larry Mishel tells the Washington Post, which describes CEO-to-worker pay ratios of 3,101-to-1 for McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook and 1,188-to-1 for Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. "Had there not been the redistribution upward … the wages of the bottom 90% could have grown twice as fast as it actually did," Mishel tells the Guardian. Per the Post, 2018 figures could be even worse for workers given the tax package signed into law last fall; critics say it will make the rich richer, though Republican backers claim it will increase wages across the board.