Elon Musk received more than 2.5 million times the compensation of the average Tesla worker in 2025, according to a new report by AFL CO on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their employees. Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an extreme outlier. However, the gap between CEOs and workers continued to grow across major US companies.
Excluding Musk, the average CEO at a top S&P 500 company earned 312 times as much as their average worker in 2025. That was up from 285 times in 2024, according to the executive pay watch report released this week by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labour unions in the US. With Musk included, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio rose sharply to 5,387:1.
Musk’s pay stood out
“In 2025, Elon Musk received the median Tesla worker’s pay every 4.23 seconds – less time than it takes to read this sentence,” states the report. The report also found that a majority of S&P 500 CEOs earned more in one day than the median US worker earned in an entire year.
Average CEO pay, excluding Musk, was $22.8m in 2025, up from $18.9m in 2024. When Musk’s compensation at Tesla is included, the average rises to $340.1m. The report also said that workers’ share of US national income had fallen to its lowest level since the second world war.
Trump earned $2.2bn in 2025
The report also examined Donald Trump’s income in 2025. His income rose nearly 254% from 2024 to $2.2bn, largely because of his cryptocurrency holdings. The report said the median US worker would need 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in 2025.
“This is political grift unlike what we have ever seen in our lifetimes, perhaps ever, but it only tells part of the story of how CEOs and the Trump administration has rigged our economy to enrich themselves at the expense of working people,” said Fred Redmond, AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer.
“Trump’s radical budget bill that Republicans rammed through Congress last year, it made drastic cuts to healthcare, food assistance for children and families in order to give massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.”
Americans face financial pressure
The report cited several figures showing the financial difficulties faced by many Americans. It said 33% of US adults have no retirement savings, while 37% do not have enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense. It also said 26% of adults have skipped medical care because of the cost, while 23% of renters in the US have fallen behind on rent over the past year.
“As President Trump said, he has a lot of assets because he was a massively successful businessman prior to becoming President, which was why he was elected to office in the first place,” said a White House spokesperson in a statement. “All of the President’s assets are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. There are no conflicts of interest.”