Tesla compensated its chief executive, Elon Musk, at a rate more than 2.5 million times that of its median worker in 2025, according to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US. The report, released this week, underscores a widening chasm between top executive pay and worker earnings across the country's largest companies.
Musk's compensation package, valued at $158.3 billion, stood as an extreme outlier, yet it coincided with a broader trend of increasing CEO-to-worker pay ratios. Excluding Musk, the average ratio for S&P 500 companies in 2025 was 312 to 1, up from 285 to 1 in 2024. Including Musk, the average ratio jumped to 5,387 to 1, according to the executive pay watch report.
Musk's Earnings Outpace Worker Wages by Seconds
“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. “A majority of S&P 500 CEOs made more in one day than the median US worker made in one year.”
Average CEO pay, excluding Musk, was $22.8 million in 2025, up from $18.9 million in 2024. When Tesla's compensation is included, the average soars to $340.1 million. The report also notes that workers' share of US national income has fallen to its lowest level since the second world war.
Trump's Income and Economic Struggles Highlighted
The report also examines Donald Trump's income in 2025, which reached $2.2 billion, largely from his crypto holdings, marking a nearly 254% increase from 2024. The median US worker would need 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in a single year.
“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.”
The report cites data demonstrating economic struggles for many Americans: 33% of US adults have no retirement savings, 37% cannot cover a $400 emergency expense, 26% have skipped medical care due to costs, and 23% of renters have fallen behind on rent in the past year.
Reactions and Responses
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. A White House spokesperson responded via email: “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. 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.”
The report's findings highlight the growing disparity between executive compensation and worker wages, with significant implications for economic policy and income inequality debates.
