Category: WSJ

Think CEOs Are Overpaid? See How They Compare With Hollywood Celebs and Sports Stars

Halfway through this season of “American Idol,” Katy Perry hit a milestone. That’s when her earnings as a judge on the ABC show surpassed what most chief executives in the S&P 500 made all of last year.

The Wall Street Journal this week released its annual analysis of CEO pay, which hit another post-recession record in 2018. But almost all of them are still looking up at radio host Howard Stern and basketball star Steph Curry.

To put executive pay in context, the Journal matched it up against earnings for highly paid professionals across a variety of fields, from sports and entertainment to finance and law.

The WSJ CEO Pay Ranking

Median pay reached $12.4 million for CEOs of the biggest U.S. companies in 2018, setting a fourth straight post-recession high even as stock-market returns tumbled at most of the companies. Most S&P 500 CEOs got raises of 5% or better during the year, while total shareholder return was -5.8%, according to a WSJ analysis of data from MyLogIQ. Scroll to explore the highest-paid CEOs, and the lowest, with comparisons of shareholder returns and other factors.

Many of the top earners of 2018 ran health-care, media and financial companies, with those sectors filling 18 of the top 25 by total pay (excluding those who came or went during the year). Unlike previous years, technology CEOs took just three of the top 25 spots.

Biotech Is Place to Be for Top Salaries

In biotechnology, the rank and file are well-to-do.

Many of the highest-paying employers in the health-care sector—and the entire S&P 500—were biotech companies, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of annual disclosures for hundreds of big U.S. companies as provided by MyLogIQ.

New Jersey-based Celgene Corp. , which sells a treatment of multiple myeloma, had the highest-paid median employee in the sector and S&P 500 at $263,237. Celgene was followed by Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., VRTX 1.61% which makes treatments for cystic fibrosis and infectious diseases, paying its typical worker $232,178.

Taser Chief Gets $246 Million Stock-Option Award

The company that sells Tasers to police departments around the world paid its chief executive $246 million last year, according to a proxy filed last month, one of the biggest compensation packages for a corporate leader.

The pay came in a package of stock options that Axon Enterprise Inc. gave longtime CEO Patrick Smith last year. However, the options only vest if the company’s market value surges and it achieves other performance targets, according to the proxy filing.

Mr. Smith’s reported compensation far surpasses that of the highest-paid CEOs last year at much larger companies and is about 20 times the median pay for an S&P 500 chief, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Axon is too small to be in the S&P 500 index.

Industrial Firms Report Big Swings in Typical Worker’s Pay

A union job at a shipyard, mine or factory usually comes with a steady paycheck, but some U.S. industrial companies are having a hard time figuring out who their typical workers are and how much they make.

Several S&P 500 companies in the industrials and materials sector posted big swings in what they said their median worker was paid in 2018 compared with 2017, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of annual disclosures for hundreds of big U.S. companies as provided by MyLogIQ.

Shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls HII -0.88% Industries Inc. and potash producer Mosaic Co. MOS -0.72% reported the typical worker got half as much as the year before. At Honeywell International Inc., HON 0.06% it was 33% higher.

Biden’s Climate Test

Former Vice President Joe Biden (D., Del.) is running for President again. And one of Donald Trump’s 2016 rivals thinks that Mr. Biden is the most formidable of the potential 2020 rivals.

The website Mediaite notes that former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who ran against Mr. Trump in the last round of Republican primaries, sees a potential GOP problem in the Midwest:

Typical Worker’s Pay Nears $200,000 at Oil Refiner

It was a fruitful year for the rank and file at oil-and-gas companies, from Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM 0.25% to Phillips 66. PSX -2.57%

Oil-and-gas drillers and refiners had some of the highest-paid median workers in the energy and utility sectors in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal analysis of annual pay disclosures for hundreds of big U.S. companies as provided by MyLogIQ.

Houston-based Phillips 66 paid its median worker $196,407, the highest of any company in the sector.

Phillips was followed by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. at $183,445.

From Coke to Macy’s, Pay for Typical Worker Takes Big Swings

As U.S. companies disclose what they pay typical workers, one thing is clear: A lot can change in a year.

Jefferies Financial Group Inc. almost tripled what it paid its median employee last year. Median pay rose by nearly 60% at Macy’s Inc. and by almost a quarter at biotech Celgene Corp. It fell by two-thirds at Coca-Cola Co. and by more than a quarter at snack-maker Mondelez International Inc.

The reasons for these big swings from 2017 to 2018 varied widely, however. Some reflected dramatic shifts in the company’s workforce. Others came about thanks to new ways of identifying that middle employee. Still others reflect actual changes in what individual workers made.