Tesla's chief executive received compensation last year valued at 2.5 million times the median employee's pay, a disparity so vast it skews the entire S&P 500 average, according to the AFL-CIO's executive pay watch report published this week.
The broader picture
Strip out Musk and the typical S&P 500 chief still earned 312 times the median worker in 2025, a jump from 285 times in 2024. Put Tesla back in and the average ratio explodes to 5,387 to one. Mean CEO pay excluding Musk climbed to $22.8 million from $18.9 million a year earlier; with the carmaker included, the figure surges to $340.1 million.
The Tesla anomaly
Musk's $158.3 billion package translates to the median Tesla worker's annual earnings every 4.23 seconds. The federation notes most S&P 500 chiefs now collect more in a day than the median American worker sees in a year. The report also documents that labor's share of national income has dropped to its lowest point since the second world war.
Political wealth
The same study tallies Donald Trump's 2025 income at $2.2 billion, mostly from cryptocurrency holdings, representing a 254 percent increase over 2024. At that rate, the median US worker would need 43,154 years to earn the equivalent. AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Fred Redmond described it as "political grift unlike what we have ever seen in our lifetimes, perhaps ever" and connected it to a Republican budget measure that reduced healthcare and food assistance while expanding corporate tax cuts.
Household strain
Supplementary data cited by the federation shows one-third of US adults hold no retirement savings, 37 percent cannot absorb a $400 emergency expense, 26 percent have deferred medical care because of cost, and 23 percent of renters fell behind on payments over the past year.
Official responses
Tesla did not reply to a request for comment. The White House said the president's assets stem from his pre-office business career and are held in fully discretionary accounts run by independent third-party managers, with no conflicts of interest.