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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Michael Sainato

Tesla paid Elon Musk 2.5m times more as CEO than its average worker in 2025

Elon Musk Tesla Inc. Donald Trump United States
Elon Musk, in a dark blazer with a microphone on his lapel, smiles slightly during a discussion
Elon Musk attends a session during the Cannes Lions international festival of creativity on 19 June 2024 in Cannes, France. Photograph: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images

Elon Musk received over 2.5m times as much compensation at Tesla as the company’s average worker, according to a new report on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their workers.

Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an outlier but came as the gap between CEO and worker pay continued to grow. Excluding Musk, last year the average ratio of CEO to worker pay for the top S&P 500 companies was 312 to 1, up from a 285:1 ratio in 2024. With Musk, the average pay ratio was 5,387:1, according to the executive pay watch report released this week by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US.

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