If Every American Earned the Median CEO Salary, How Much Richer Would the Country Be?

Imagine a satellite wherever each American idiosyncratic earned what a emblematic S&P 500 CEO makes. It’s a thought experimentation that reveals conscionable however stark the income spread has go — and what closing it mightiness mean for the economy.

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GOBankingRates runs the mathematics connected what would hap if each American earned the median wage of a CEO — and however overmuch richer it would marque the United States.

The median CEO astatine an S&P 500 institution earned $17.1 cardinal successful 2024, Equilar reported. Meanwhile, median play net for full-time U.S. workers stood astatine $1,196 successful the 2nd 4th of 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — translating to astir $62,192 annually.

That means the emblematic S&P 500 CEO earns astir 275 times what the median American idiosyncratic makes successful a year.

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The United States had astir 341 cardinal radical arsenic of January 2025, per the U.S. Census Bureau. If each American — from newborns to retirees — abruptly earned the median CEO wage of $17.1 million, the country’s full income would balloon to astir $5.8 quadrillion.

To enactment that successful perspective, that’s astir 5,800 times the existent U.S. gross home product. The existent U.S. system generates astir $28 trillion annually, making this hypothetical script economically intolerable alternatively than simply improbable.

This thought experimentation isn’t astir feasibility — it’s astir illustrating scale. The CEO-to-worker wage ratio astatine S&P 500 companies reached 192-to-1 successful 2024, Equilar found. That’s up from 186-to-1 successful 2023 and represents a melodramatic summation from humanities norms.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation grew astir tenfold faster than emblematic idiosyncratic wage betwixt 1978 and 2024. Stock-related wage present accounts for 79% of mean CEO compensation.

While each American earning CEO-level wage remains fantasy, the wealthiness attraction astatine the apical has existent consequences. The AFL-CIO reported that the mean S&P 500 CEO earned $18.9 cardinal successful full compensation successful 2024, portion the median U.S. idiosyncratic made conscionable $49,500.

The highest-paid CEO successful 2024 was Patrick Smith of Axon Enterprise, who received $164.5 million, Equilar stated — a compensation bundle that would instrumentality the median idiosyncratic much than 3,300 years to earn.