CEOs were paid 312 times more than the average employee last year

The income gap keeps growing. Chief executives at 350 of the largest companies in the U.S. now make 312 times more than their average employee, research from the Economic Policy Institute found.

Compensation for CEOs keeps growing, The Hill reported Friday, while employee compensation stagnates. In 2017, CEOs made an average of $18.9 million, a 17.6 percent increase from the year before. Meanwhile, the wages of average workers increased just 0.3 percent.

The think tank said that pay for CEOs has grown at a much faster rate than stock prices or corporate profits at these major companies. Executive compensation has risen nearly 1,000 percent since 1978, which continues to push the CEO-to-worker pay ratio wider. In 2016, the ratio was 270-to-1, while in 1995 it was 112-to-1. Back in 1965, the ratio was just 20-to-1.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"CEO pay continues to be very, very high and has grown far faster in recent decades than typical worker pay," the institute report said. "Higher CEO pay does not reflect correspondingly higher output or better firm performance. Exorbitant CEO pay therefore means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers." See more results at the Economic Policy Institute.