With gas prices, energy bills, and grocery costs all rising, the affordability crisis is top of mind for most workers.
But you can’t talk about that crisis without also talking about extreme wealth inequality, says Patricia Stottlemyer, policy lead for labor rights at Oxfam America.
And just as affordability has worsened recently, so has the gap between regular workers and the rich, including company CEOs.
In 2025, for example, the top 1,500 CEOs of the world’s largest corporations saw an 11% real-terms pay raise. The average global worker, on the other hand, saw their real wages increase by only 0.5%.
That means those CEOs saw their pay increase 20 times faster than workers last year. In the United States specifically, CEO pay grew 20.4 times faster than workers’ wages, an increase of 25.6% compared to just 1.3%.
The data comes from a new analysis by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam, which highlights the ways workers are being left behind; the analysis is tied to International Workers’ Day, also called May Day.
‘CEOs have never had it so good’
The average CEO took home $8.4 million in both pay and bonuses in 2025, up from $7.6 million in 2024, according to the analysis.
