CEOs got an 11% pay raise in 2025. Workers got 0.5%

CEO pay is on the rise in 2025, and the pace of growth is leaving the average worker far behind, according to a new report.

The leaders of some of the world’s biggest companies got an 11% pay bump last year, while the average worker globally got a measly 0.5% increase. That means CEO pay grew roughly 20 times faster than that of the average worker, according to a Friday study published by the International Trade Union Confederation and Oxfam.

The report, which looked at 1,500 companies across 33 countries, found that the average CEO was paid about $8.4 million last year, up from an average of $5.5 million in 2019. 

The poster child of high executive pay, though, may be Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In November, shareholders approved a pay package for the world’s richest man that could award him up to $1 trillion worth of stock over 10 years if he meets certain growth goals, including a requirement to grow Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion, an increase of about 585%. The record-breaking pay package was valued at $158 billion in 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Billionaires did incredibly well last year, thanks in part to solid stock market gains in 2025. The S&P 500 increased by just under 18% in 2025. Nearly 1,000 billionaires whose inves...