If Every American Earned the Median CEO Salary, How Much Richer Would the Country Be?
Written by
Jamie Stone
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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Imagine a world where every American worker earned what a typical S&P 500 CEO makes. It’s a thought experiment that reveals just how stark the income gap has become — and what closing it might mean for the economy.
GOBankingRates runs the math on what would happen if every American earned the median salary of a CEO — and how much richer it would make the United States.
The Numbers Behind the Gap
The median CEO at an S&P 500 company earned $17.1 million in 2024, Equilar reported. Meanwhile, median weekly earnings for full-time U.S. workers stood at $1,196 in the second quarter of 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — translating to roughly $62,192 annually.
That means the typical S&P 500 CEO earns about 275 times what the median American worker makes in a year.
The Calculation
The United States had approximately 341 million people as of January 2025, per the U.S. Census Bureau. If every American — from newborns to retirees — suddenly earned the median CEO salary of $17.1 million, the country’s total income would balloon to roughly $5.8 quadrillion.
To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 5,800 times the current U.S. gross domestic product. The current U.S. economy generates about $28 trillion annually, making this hypothetical scenario economically impossible rather than merely improbable.
Why This Matters
This thought experiment isn’t about feasibility — it’s about illustrating scale. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio at S&P 500 companies reached 192-to-1 in 2024, Equilar found. That’s up from 186-to-1 in 2023 and represents a dramatic increase from historical norms.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation grew nearly tenfold faster than typical worker pay between 1978 and 2024. Stock-related pay now accounts for 79% of average CEO compensation.
The Real-World Impact
While every American earning CEO-level pay remains fantasy, the wealth concentration at the top has real consequences. The AFL-CIO reported that the average S&P 500 CEO earned $18.9 million in total compensation in 2024, while the median U.S. worker made just $49,500.
The highest-paid CEO in 2024 was Patrick Smith of Axon Enterprise, who received $164.5 million, Equilar stated — a compensation package that would take the median worker more than 3,300 years to earn.
The Bottom Line
If every American earned like a CEO, the country wouldn’t be richer — the entire economic system would collapse under the weight of impossible mathematics. What this exercise really reveals is the extraordinary gap between executive compensation and worker pay, a divide that continues to widen even as companies report record profits and CEOs receive ever-larger stock awards.
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