The average employee would have to work for 196 years to take home what the company boss earns after another bumper year of pay rises for chief executives.
The median pay package for CEOs in the S&P 500 rose 12.6 percent to $16.3 million in 2023, dwarfing the 4.1 percent enjoyed for private sector workers.
Topping the list in the Associated Press survey is Broadcom boss Hock Tan who took home a whopping $162 million.
But even that would pail into insignificance if Tesla boss Elon Musk succeeds in his court battle for $56 billion worth of the company's stock.
'The pay ratio signals a sort of a winner-take-all culture, that companies are treating their CEOs as, you know, as superstars as opposed to, team players,' said Brandon Rees of the AFL-CIO.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan topped the survey of CEO pay with a package valued at about $162 million in 2023 after its stock value increased from from $3.8 billion in 2009 to $645 billion
William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp slotted behind Tan in the list with a relatively modest $66.3 million.
Apple's Tim Cook suffered a 36 percent pay cut on 2022 after a shareholder revolt but still pocketed a tidy $63.2 million.
Half the CEOs in this year´s pay survey made at least 196 times what their median employee earned - up from 185 times in last year´s survey.
The gap is particularly wide at companies where employees typically earn lower wages, such as retailers.
At Ross Stores, for example, the company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a part-time retail store associate who made $8,618.
It would take 2,100 years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentler´s compensation from 2023, valued at $18.1 million.
A year earlier, it would have taken the median worker 1,137 years to match the CEO´s pay.
'In this post-pandemic market, the desire is for boards to reward and retain CEOs when they feel like they have a good leader in place,' said Kelly Malafis, founding partner of Compensation Advisory Partners in New York.
'That all combined kind of leads to increased compensation.'
William Lansing, the CEO ofFair Isaac Corp was second on the list with$66.3 million
Apple CEO Tim Cooksuffered a 36 percent pay cut on 2022 after a shareholder revolt but still pocketed a tidy $63.2 million
Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam pocketed $50.9 million to earn fourth place
Netflix's high-profile co-CEO Ted Sarandos was paid $49.8 million after another successful year for the streaming giant
A large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can´t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits.
But soaring stock market helped propel two dozen CEOs in the AP's annual survey to a pay rise of 50 percent or more.
Although securities filings show Elon Musk received no compensation as CEO of Tesla Inc., his pay is currently front and center at the electric car company.
Musk is asking shareholders to restore a pay package that was struck down by a judge in Delaware, who said the approval process for the package was 'deeply flawed'.
Companies are required to assign a value to stock awards at the time they're granted and the award given to Musk in 2018 was valued at $2.3 billion.
Musk's total pay package is now estimated to be worth around $56 billion.
The survey's methodology also excluded CEOs such as Nikesh Arora at Palo Alto Networks who received $151.4 million, and Christopher Winfrey at Charter Communications who got $89 million.
But it did include Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc who earned $50.9 million, and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix who was paid $49.8 million.
Lisa Su, CEO and chair of the board of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, was the highest paid female CEO in the AP survey for the fifth year in a row with $30 million in 2023
More women made the AP survey than in previous years, but their numbers in the corner office are still minuscule compared to their male counterparts. Of the 341 CEOs included in the data, 25 were women.
Lisa Su, CEO and chair of the board of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, was the highest paid female CEO in the AP survey for the fifth year in a row in fiscal 2023, bringing in compensation valued at $30.3 million - flat with her compensation package in 2022. Her overall rank rose to 21 from 25.
The other top paid female CEOs include Mary Barra of automaker General Motors ($27.8 million); Jane Fraser of banking giant Citigroup ($25.5 million); Kathy Warden of aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman Corp. ($23.5 million); and Carol Tome of package deliverer UPS Inc. ($23.4 million).
The median pay package for female CEOs rose 21 percent to $17.6 million.
