State’s Top CEOs Got Richer in 2023

Don’t cry for America’s CEOs.

Yes, they had a slightly down year in 2022, with the average pay for leaders of the nation’s biggest companies, the S&P 500, dropping to a mere $16.7 million, down from an all-time high of $18.3 million in 2021.

But compensation for top CEOs is climbing again, as it typically has year after year going back a half century. It increased by 6% in 2023—to an average of $17.7 million in total compensation, the latest Executive Paywatch report by the AFL-CIO found. Over the past 10 years the average pay has risen by $4.2 million, the report found, increasing from $13.5 million in 2014.

But that’s just the average, with many far above that number. The top-paid CEO, TPG Inc.’s leader Jon Winkelried was paid more than $198 million in 2023. Yes, that’s just one year of pay.

This ever-rising level of pay enabled the average CEO to earn 268 times more than the average worker at his or her company in 2023. It would take more than five career lifetimes for workers to earn what CEOs receive in just one year, the report found. “On average, the median employee of an S&P 500 company would have had to start working in 1755 (prior to the start of the American Revolution) to earn what the average CEO received in 2023,” the report noted.

But that’s just the average. Sue Nabi, the CEO of COTY Inc. received $149.4 million in compensation last year, which was 3,679 times more than the median worker’s pay at her company. Her employees would have had to start working back around 1650 BC to have by now earned what she collected for her year of work in 2023.

The numbers for Wisconsin are lower, but that’s because the average size of the companies are smaller: just nine state businesses are included in (and toward the bottom of) the S&P 500. Still, there were four Wisconsin CEOs who collected more than $15 million in 2023, including Frank Bisignano of Fiserv Inc. (a whopping $27.9 million), Blake Moret of Rockwell Automation Inc. ($16.8 million, Kevin Conroy of Exact Sciences Corp. ($16.1 million) and George Oliver of Johnson Controls International PLC ($15.9 million).

But Jonas Prising, the CEO of Manpower, was arguably the most overpaid: he collected $12.7 million or 1,276 times more than the average employee at his company earned, which was the top CEO-to-worker pay ratio in Wisconsin and 22nd highest nationally.

“Pay ratios on this scale reflect levels of income inequality that were widely viewed as abhorrent 50 years ago,” as New York Times business columnist Jeff Sommer has written. In the 1970s, one study found, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio for big companies was less than 20 to one. In the 1980s, economist and Wall Street Journal columnist Peter Drucker cited surveys showing it felt “about right” to people when C.E.O.s received 10 to 12 times what workers earned.

“But paying the C.E.O. hundreds of times more than workers earned? That was out of the question then, though it is now standard practice for many big publicly traded companies,” Sommers noted.

What has happened since the late 1970s is that CEO pay has exploded, rising by 1,166.8% between 1978 and 2019, while the pay for average (non-supervisory) workers rose by just 13.7%, a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found.

And as the top skippers get their massive payouts, all the other boats rise for the lesser CEOs. The AFL-CIO report includes pay for far more than the leaders of the S&P 500, with statistics on more than 3,700 top executives. And more than 2,500 of them earned more than $2 million in 2023, including 2,200 who earned more than $3 million, 1,950 who earned more than $4 million and some 1,700 who earned more than $5 million.

But it is not just the top dogs benefitting from this drumbeat of ever-rising executive pay. “CEO pay growth has had spillover effects, pulling up the pay of other executives and managers, who constitute more than 40% of all top 1.0% and 0.1%” of earners in America, the EPI study noted. “The growth of CEO and executive compensation overall was a major factor driving the doubling of the income shares of the top 1% and top 0.1% of U.S. households from 1979 to 2007.”

Who is paying the bill for this huge list of millionaires? The AFL-CIO offers examples of how this works. “Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey’s total compensation increased from $15.6 million in 2022 to $89.1 million in 2023, a 470% annual increase,” the report notes. In November 2022, the company hiked its Spectrum home internet service prices by $5 per month, “affecting an estimated 9.5 million customers,” and then “increased prices again in 2024, including a $6-per-month increase in its low-income internet plan.”

Or take Starbucks, whose CEO Laxman Narasimha’s total compensation “increased from $8.8 million in 2022 to $14.6 million in 2023, a 66% annual increase. Starbucks has increased its prices several times in recent years, with the cost of a Venti-size cup of coffee reportedly increasing 20% in some locations between 2021 and 2022. In 2023, Starbucks also doubled the amount of purchases required to earn rewards…” Meanwhile the company has aggressively fought efforts to unionize its workforce, both nationally and in Wisconsin, as an Urban Milwaukee analysis noted.

In Wisconsin, the Manpower company, where the CEO earns 1,276 times more than the average worker, has been accused of labor violations to forestall an effort to unionize workers at its subsidiary, Experis Game Solutions, as Urban Milwaukee reported.

It’s all part of a long-term trend in increased income inequality since 1975 that has transferred $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the wealthiest 10%, as a recent Rand Corporation study found.

Besides the four CEOs in Wisconsin who were paid more than $15 million in 2023, there were another five who earned more than $10 million, another 16 who earned more than $5 million, another 14 who earned more than $2 million and another four who earned more than $1 million. Here are the top 10 in Wisconsin:

Top Paid Wisconsin CEOs in 2023

Name	Company	Pay (millions)	x Average Worker Pay
Frank Bisignano	Fiserv Inc.	$27.9M	380
Blake Moret	Rockwell Intl	$16.8M	262
Kevin Conroy	Exact Sciences	$16.1M	111
George Oliver	Johnson Controls Intl	$15.9M	321
Jonas Prising	Manpowergroup	$12.7M	1,276
Jochen Zeitz	Harley-Davidson	$12M	157
Louis Pinkham	Regal Rexnord	$11.8M	624
Nicholas Pinchuk	Snap-on Inc.	$10.6M	157
John Pfeifer	Oshkosh Corp.	$10.4M	175
Todd Adams	Zurn Elkay Water Sol.	$9.9M	172