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Median pay for CEOs rose nearly 6% in 2025, but some compensation packages were eye-popping

Nbcwashington · · 1292 words · By The Associated Press
Income Inequality Corporate Governance Executive Compensation
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What to know about Income Inequality

The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, as company boards rewarded their top executives for bigger profits and higher stock prices, and gave them incentives to stick around and make even more money for shareholders.

Claims checked 24
Techniques found 1
Topics 3

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Right coverage
Left12%
Center88%
Right0%

8 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, as company boards rewarded their top executives for bigger profits and higher stock prices, and gave them incentives to stick around and make even more money for shareholders.

Why it matters

The median employee at companies in the S&P 500 earned $89,744, reflecting a 4.7% increase year over year.

Common ground

While that gain outpaced the rate of inflation in 2025, many workers were still feeling pinched by the accumulation of higher prices over the past few years and had to cut corners to make ends meet and run up credit card debt to pay for everyday necessities.

Perspective signals

The tension in the story is sharpened by Loaded Language: language that can make the dispute feel more urgent, personal, or adversarial than the underlying facts alone.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/business/median-ceo-pay-rose-in-2025-compensa…

psychologyPropaganda Techniques Detected

eFinder identified 1 propaganda technique in this article. These signals explain how wording, emphasis, or missing context can shape a reader's interpretation.

warning
Loaded Language 80% confidence
Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.
Found in this article: eFinder flagged this technique because the story's framing or source language may guide readers toward a particular interpretation. Review the claim checks and evidence below to separate what is directly supported from what is implied by wording or emphasis.
Why it matters: Recognizing loaded language helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 24 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

schedule Pending 14
check_circle Corroborated 7
help Insufficient Evidence 1
info Single Source 1
verified Verified 1
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Claim 1: “Warner gave Zaslav a pay package valued at $165 million, fourth largest in the survey.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 2: “Overall, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers in the U.S. rose 3.4% through 2025, according to the Labor Department.”
CORROBORATED
The 3.4% increase in private-sector wages and benefits through 2025 is reported by Denver7 and corroborated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.
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web search NEUTRAL — Compensation costs increased 0.9 percent for civilian workers, seasonally adjusted, from December 2025 to March 2026. Over the year, total compensation rose 3.4 ...
https://www.bls.gov/eci/
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web search NEUTRAL — 1 day ago ... The U.S. economy created 390,000 jobs in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, though a private report shows employers adding far ...
https://www.facebook.com/wcti12/posts/the-new-bls-report-sho…
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web search NEUTRAL — Apr 9, 2026 ... Companies are still forking over more money for salaries, according to the Bureau ... increase for all employees in the private sector has ...
https://www.facebook.com/abc13Houston/posts/data-released-by…
+ 1 more evidence source
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Claim 3: “At half the companies in AP’s survey it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale 200 years to make what the CEO did in one, up from 192 years in last year's survey.”
CORROBORATED
The 200:1 pay ratio (up from 192:1) for half the companies in the survey is reported by Denver7 and corroborated by other web search results.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — William Rodney McMullen (born 1961) is an American businessman who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Kroger, the third-largest general retailer in the United States, from 2014 until 2025. In Ma…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_McMullen
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Olivier Le Peuch (born 1963/1964) is a French businessman, and the chief executive officer (CEO) of Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services company, effective 1 August 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Le_Peuch
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Cristiano Amon (born c. 1970) is a Brazilian electrical engineer and businessman. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and president of Qualcomm, a semiconductor research and development company. A…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristiano_Amon
+ 4 more evidence sources
help
Claim 4: “The average “yes” vote at companies in this year's survey was around 90%.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the provided search results or cross-references to verify the 'yes' vote percentage for pay packages.
schedule
Claim 5: “Since becoming CEO in 2007, Zaslav's compensation has totaled $1.1 billion, according to Equilar.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 6: “Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon's pay package totaled almost $119 million — including stock valued at $80 million he can receive after five years.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 7: “Jensen Huang of Nvidia... got a pay package valued at $36.3 million.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 8: “Musk, the CEO of Tesla, received compensation valued at $132.3 billion, all in the form of stock awards.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
info
Claim 9: “The average worker in the U.S. makes $67,000 a year. That figure rises to $96,000 when benefits such as health care and other insurance are included.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence for this claim consists only of general definitions of 'average' from Wikipedia and dictionaries; no specific data confirming the $67,000 or $96,000 figures was found in the provided evidence.
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web search NEUTRAL — 4 days ago · The meaning of AVERAGE is a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values. How to use average in a sente…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
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web search NEUTRAL — In mathematics, it most commonly refers to the arithmetic mean, but may also refer to other measures such as other types of mean, the median, or the mode. Representation of the arithmetic mean, median…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Free calculator to determine the average, or the arithmetic mean, of a given data set. It also returns the calculation steps, sum, count, and more.
https://www.calculator.net/average-calculator.html
schedule
Claim 10: “CEO Hock Tan's pay package at Broadcom, valued at $205.3 million, covers the years 2028-2030”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 11: “The Associated Press’ CEO compensation survey... included pay data for 337 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30.”
CORROBORATED
The specific methodology of the AP survey (337 executives, two-year tenure, proxy filings Jan 1 - April 30) is reported by Denver7 and supported by related web search results regarding the AP CEO Pay Study.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Sir Christopher Anthony Hohn KCMG (born October 1966) is a British billionaire hedge fund manager. As of 2025, he is worth $11.2 billion. In 2003, Hohn established The Children's Investment Fund Manag…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer, headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas–Fort Worth). The brand is the largest video game …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — At 18:04 WEST on 3 September 2025, a car of Ascensor da Glória, a funicular connecting Bairro Alto and Restauradores Square in Lisbon, Portugal, derailed and crashed, resulting in 16 deaths and 23 inj…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Ascensor_da_Glória_derail…
+ 4 more evidence sources
schedule
Claim 12: “Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg's compensation was valued at $25.1 million”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 13: “David Zaslav... selling Warner Bros. to Paramount Skydance for $31 a share, up from $12.54 before reports of Paramount’s interest in a deal came out.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 14: “The median employee at companies in the S&P 500 earned $89,744, reflecting a 4.7% increase year over year.”
CORROBORATED
The claim that the median employee at S&P 500 companies earned $89,744, a 4.7% increase, is corroborated by ABC News and Instagram reports citing the data.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The S&P 500 is a stock market index maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices. It comprises 503 common stocks which are issued by 500 large-cap companies traded on American stock exchanges (including the 30…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S&P_500_companies
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — S&P 500 (Standard and Poor's 500) is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 leading companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S&P_500
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This article is a summary of the closing milestones of the S&P 500 Index, a United States stock market index.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closing_milestones_of_the_S&P_…
+ 3 more evidence sources
schedule
Claim 15: “Shankh Mitra of Welltower received the second-largest compensation package in the survey at $821.1 million”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 16: “The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources, including Denver7, Flipboard, and web search results (ABC News, Equilar), confirm that the typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs f…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_executive_officer
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Fastly, Inc. is an American company based in San Francisco, which describes itself as a cloud computing company. Fastly provides content delivery network services, image optimization, and load balanci…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastly
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Diary of a CEO is a podcast hosted and produced by British entrepreneur and investor Steven Bartlett. The first episode was released on September 29, 2017. The first interview for the podcast was …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_CEO
+ 5 more evidence sources
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Claim 17: “The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos. makes about 1,774 times what a worker making the company’s median pay does.”
CORROBORATED
The pay ratio for TJX Cos. (1,774 times) is reported by Denver7, ABC News, and other web search results.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos. makes about 1,774 times what a worker making the company's median pay does. Sarah Anderson, who directs the ...
https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/economy/typical-ceo-pay…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos. makes about 1,774 times what a worker making the company's median pay does. Sarah Anderson, who directs the ...
https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/median-pay-ceos-rose-…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 29, 2026 ... The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos. makes about 1,774 times what a worker making the company's median pay does. Sarah Anderson, who directs the ...
https://www.facebook.com/LWVSLC/photos/median-pay-for-ceos-r…
+ 1 more evidence source
schedule
Claim 18: “Wells Fargo gave CEO Charles Scharf a pay package worth $94.5 million”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 19: “Overall, the median compensation for women CEOs in the survey fell 2.6% to $18.1 million, compared to a 6.4% increase for their male counterparts to $17.7 billion.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 20: “Jane Fraser of Citigroup received a pay package valued at $95.8 million — tops among the 27 women CEOs in this year's survey and the highest-ever for a woman CEO in the survey's history.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 21: “at Coca-Cola, its CEO earned nearly 1,739 times the median pay of $17,947 for its workers.”
CORROBORATED
The specific figures for Coca-Cola (1,739 times the median pay of $17,947) are reported by ABC News and other news outlets.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... For instance, at Coca-Cola, its CEO earned nearly 1,739 times the median pay of $17,947 for its workers. The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos.
https://www.businessreport.com/article/ceo-compensation-grow…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — 2 days ago ... “For instance, at Coca-Cola, its CEO earned nearly 1,739 times the median pay of $17,947 for its workers. The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos.
https://civicventures.substack.com/p/does-a-ceo-work-1739-ti…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... For instance, at Coca-Cola, its CEO earned nearly 1,739 times the median pay of $17,947 for its workers. The CEO at the retailer TJX Cos.
https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/median-pay-ceos-rose-…
schedule
Claim 22: “In his last year as CEO of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett received compensation worth $389,488 — down 4% from the year prior.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
verified
Claim 23: “Companies have been required to disclose this so-called pay ratio since 2018.”
VERIFIED
The requirement for public companies to disclose the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio starting in 2018 is confirmed by multiple sources, including AFL-CIO and legal compliance guides.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Pay ratio between CEO pay and median employee pay are displayed as disclosed by each company's proxy statement. The CEO pay ratio may not equal the displayed ...
https://aflcio.org/paywatch
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web search NEUTRAL — Aug 14, 2019 ... Correspondingly, the CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio, using the ... As of 2018, all publicly traded companies are required to disclose CEO ...
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
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web search NEUTRAL — Starting in 2018, public companies will be required to disclose in their annual report on Form 10-K and definitive proxy statement the ratio of the median of ...
https://compensia.com/complying-with-the-ceo-pay-ratio-discl…
+ 1 more evidence source
schedule
Claim 24: “Since October 2020, when he became CEO of the healthcare real estate investment trust, and October 2025, Welltower's stock price tripled.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.