CEO pay jumps to $19 million annually, as fears mount over the wealthy pocketing gains

Top executives of America’s biggest companies saw their average annual pay surge to $18.9 miljoen in 2017, according to a report released Thursday, fueling concerns about the gulf between the nation’s richest and everyone else. The dramatic 18 percent jump in chief executive pay came as wages for American workers remained essentially flat, pushing the gap between executive compensation and employee pay to its highest point in about a decade.

The rise in executive pay shown in the report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, is driven largely by the big increases in the stock market during the past year. The bulk of CEO compensation is made up of stock grants or stock options, which can lead to substantial paydays for chief executives when companies perform well in the market. Die Standard & Poor’s stock market index jumped 14.5 percent in value from 2016 te 2017 when adjusting for inflation, EPI said.

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