Low-wage S&P 500 firms spent $718 billion on stock buybacks since 2019
The Institute for Policy Studies released an executive excess report finding that the average chief executive at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay earned 614 times more than their average worker in 2025.
The IPS analysis found CEO compensation at these firms rose 41.4% between 2019 and 2025, unadjusted for inflation — twice the rate of median worker pay growth at the same companies. Median worker pay rose 20.7% over the same period, while inflation rose 25.9%, meaning real wages at these firms declined.
The CEO-to-worker pay ratio at the low-wage 100 firms increased 8.4% between 2019 and 2025. Average CEO compensation among these corporations was $17.5 million in 2025, compared with median worker pay of $36,571.
Sarah Anderson, lead author of the report and director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the disparity leaves executives disconnected from workers’ daily realities. “To me, it seems like these CEOs are just living on a remote economic planet from the one that their employees are living on,” Anderson said, “and it makes it really hard for them to fathom what it’s like to have to worry about putting food on your family’s table or even coming home at night if you are at risk of being detained by ICE.”
The report identified at least 36 billionaires whose wealth is linked to the low-wage 100 corporations, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott, the eight Walton family members whose wealth derives from Walmart, and Carvana co-founders Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia III.
Stock buybacks at the low-wage 100 corporations rose to $108.6 billion in 2025 from $105 billion in 2024, according to the report. Between 2019 and 2025, the IPS report found, these firms spent a combined $718 billion on stock buybacks.
Walmart led the group on stock buybacks, spending $8.1 billion — equivalent to a $3,851 bonus for each of the company’s 2.1 million workers, the report calculated. Walmart’s former CEO Doug McMillon, who stepped down in January 2026, received $29.2 million in compensation in 2025, 958 times Walmart’s median worker pay of $30,520.
The report noted the low-wage 100 corporations maintain a combined force of 1,282 registered federal lobbyists, and said many of these companies did not denounce aggressive immigration enforcement actions toward their workforce or on their property.
Anderson said low-wage workers now face what she described as the largest cuts to Medicaid and the federal food assistance program SNAP in U.S. history. Many employees at these companies rely on both programs, she said.
The IPS report proposes several policy responses to excessive executive pay at low-wage corporations: a tax increase on corporations paying CEOs more than 50 times their median employees’ wages, an increase on stock buyback taxes, and restrictions barring government contractors and subsidy recipients from engaging in stock buybacks.
Walmart did not respond to multiple requests for comment.