[MSU '73]

If you just consider the average compensation (wages plus benefits) of full-time year-round workers in non-managerial jobs - roughly $40,000 - CEO pay is more like 270 times bigger than the average Joe's. That's still a far cry from days gone by. In 1989, for instance, U.S. CEOs of large companies earned 71 times more than the average worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

CEO-to-worker pay appears to narrow - Aug. 29, 2007

The amount of CEO pay relative to corporate profits has grown: in the
mid-1990s CEO pay was equivalent to roughly 5% of corporate profits,
but that amount rose to roughly 10% of profits by 2003 (unfortunately,

more recent data are not available).

U.S. CEOs earn two and a quarter times the average of the 13 other
advanced countries for which there are comparable data. In fact, there is
only one country, Switzerland, whose CEOs are paid even as much as

60% that of U.S. CEOs.

Over the 1992 to 2005 period the median CEO saw pay rise by 186.2%,

while the median worker saw wages rise by just 7.2%.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org...ts-CEO_Pay.pdf