CEOs made 272 times more than their workers in 2022, earning nearly $17 million on average

• CEOs at 500 major firms make 272 times more than their workers, according to a new report.
• That's per the latest executive pay report from the AFL-CIO, which looks at S&P 500 compensation.
• On average, CEOs make $16.7 million, a $5 million increase over the last decade.

CEO paychecks once again dwarfed how much their workers are taking home in 2022, illustrating a gap that's prompted a skryocketing number of strikes and labor actions as workers demand higher pay and better conditions.

Over the last ten years, CEOs' paychecks have swelled by $5 million on average — leading to average compensation of $16.7 million in 2022, according to the AFL-CIO's latest iteration of its annual Executive Paywatch report. That report tracks the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay across S&P 500 firms based on companies' annual filings with the SEC.

"We really think that it's important that when companies tell us they can't afford it or that it doesn't work for their business model, that we need to look at what they're doing with executive compensation," Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator for actors' union SAG-AFTRA — which currently has over 100,000 members out on strike over pay and AI — said in a press conference. 

For workers, that means their chief executives make, on average, 272 times more than they do — meaning it would take the average worker five working lifetimes to earn as much as their top bosses, per the AFL-CIO.

While CEO compensation tumbled a bit from 2021 to 2022, falling 9%, Brandon Rees, the AFL-CIO's deputy director of corporations and capital markets, noted in a press conference that that was due to chief executives reducing the use of stock option compensation.

"By any measure, CEO pay is still off the charts by historical measures," Rees said. 

The report found that the biggest pay ratio across industries was in communication services, where CEO pay outperforms workers' salaries by 508:1. On average, CEOs in that field make nearly $38 million. 

The report comes as workers' wage gains cool in the face of a less-hot labor market, even as prices still remain high amidst inflation's slow descent. In May, wage growth finally outpaced rising prices for the first time in two years, with a 0.2% bump in real wages, as the minimum wage still lingers at $7.25 an hour. But it's even better for those at the top: Experts told Insider's Jennifer Sor that predictions of a richcession haven't come true, with the wealthiest Americans holding on a greater share of wealth than ever.