As the economy reels from the effects of ongoing pandemic bungling, you may be wondering how America's valuable and important corporate executives are doing during these trying days.
Fine. They're doing just fine.
A new survey reported by the The New York Times shows that few public companies have cut executive pay during the pandemic and it’s resulting massive layoffs. Among those companies that made a show of cutting pay, the actual cuts made were almost always minor compared to overall executive pay and bonuses. How minor?
United Airlines' CEO-turned-executive chairman: "a little less than 3 percent" of 2019 earnings.
Delta: about 5%
Disney's Bob Iger: about 3%
Marriott: "less than" 2%
And so forth.
Mind you, when you're talking about a single-digit percentage of tens of millions of dollars, it adds up. America's top executives are really going to feel that 2-5%ish reduction of pay as the national economy craters, unemployment hits near-unimaginable levels, and a homelessness crisis unlike anything the nation has ever seen looms on the horizon.
I'm lying, of course. Nobody's going to feel that pain. The main problem here is that companies are cutting executive salaries, but executive salaries aren't how companies compensate their executives. Stock options, bonuses, and other means are used to multiply take-home pay by 10 times or more, and it's not clear how much, if at all, any of that other pay will be clawed back in future quarters.
I'm lying again, of course. The odds are near-zero it will get clawed back. Anyone old enough to remember the great recession, just one decade back, knows how this is going to go.
Anyhoo, if you were staying up late at night wondering how, say, Disney executives were going to get by, you needn't worry. The airlines will be fine, or at least the people who decide what color the planes are will be fine. The foreign-flagged cruise lines will be fine, both because they'll be getting tax breaks and because if things get too dire Trump will assuredly announce that the newest cure for COVID-19 turns out to be compulsive gambling on a ship where international laws only loosely apply. Now put the seat of your car back, close your eyes, and get some sleep already.