Falling Median Pay May Reflect Pandemic Effects Rather Than Real Trends

Amid the pandemic, lockdowns and later a tightening job market, employee pay diverged at Florida’s large public companies in 2020. The median employee pay fell by more than 5% at 16 companies, rose by at least 5% at 35 and hovered within that range for the rest.

Florida Trend examined data provided by MyLogIQ from the companies’ annual disclosures of median employee pay as required by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The data covered 85 Florida-based companies in the Russell 3000 that reported 2019 and 2020 median employee pay.

The pandemic produced aberrations. Miami-based cruise operator Carnival, for example, reported a 76% increase in pay for its median employee to $27,151. It’s not that cruise waiters earned more. In 2019, Carnival based its median pay calculation on 110,668 employees, many of them ship-based and working six- to 11-month terms. For 2020 with the ships not sailing due to the pandemic, the number was down to 23,986, shore-based employees, who tend to earn more.