CEO compensation has been the subject of controversy for years. Many people working for large companies and investors in these companies object to chief executive pay, which often reaches tens of millions of dollars a year. Boards of these companies argue that outstanding CEOs are hard to find. If they are not paid well, they can go elsewhere, leaving only substandard management behind.

The median pay for CEOs has risen most years over the last decade when measured by the compensation of S&P 500 companies. A typical CEO makes a hundred times more than the median pay of their workers. At public corporations with low-paid workers, the multiple can be much higher. (These are the big US companies paying less than $10 an hour.)

Some years, one or more CEOs make over $100 million. It is rare but not underheard of. In 2022, according to proxy information from MyLogIQ, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company to analyze public company information, one CEO reached the figure.