Elon Musk’s record-setting compensation packages from Tesla and SpaceX are reshaping executive CTC across corporate America, with S&P 500 boards increasingly using them as a benchmark for larger CEO pay, an American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations study found, according to a Reuters report.
Excluding Musk, the average compensation for S&P 500 chief executives jumped 21% to a record $22.8 million in 2025, data released on Thursday by the AFL-CIO showed. It was the highest figure since the AFL-CIO began tracking CEO pay in the 1990s.