Top CEOs make more than 300 times what their workers are paid

Pay for the last people to need a raise—CEOs of large companies—rose again in 2014. Total compensation for CEOs of the 350 largest companies is now 303 times what workers take in, which is down from the peak of 376-to-1 in 2000 but still ridiculously high. According to the Economic Policy Institute's Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis:

• Average CEO compensation for the largest firms was $16.3 million in 2014. This estimate uses a comprehensive measure of CEO pay that covers chief executives of the top 350 U.S. firms and includes the value of stock options exercised in a given year. Compensation is up 3.9 percent since 2013 and 54.3 percent since the recovery began in 2009.
• From 1978 to 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO compensation increased 997 percent, a rise almost double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 10.9 percent growth in a typical worker’s annual compensation over the same period.

CEOs aren't just out-earning the bottom 99 percent. In 2013, CEOs were getting 5.84 times more compensation than people in the top 0.1 percent of earners. But while mere 0.1 percenters might not be doing as well as CEOs, they can't be too mad about it:

These extraordinary pay increases have had spillover effects in pulling up the pay of other executives and managers, who constitute a larger group of workers than is commonly recognized. Consequently, the growth of CEO and executive compensation overall was a major factor driving the doubling of the income shares of the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of U.S. households from 1979 to 2007.

A rising tide lifts one percent of boats, apparently.