Elon Musk earned over 2.5 million times more than Tesla workers as CEO pay surged again

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Winners & losers: Everything is more expensive these days, and most people's wages haven't risen at the same rate. Unless they're a CEO, that is. Company bosses now get more than ever, pushing their pay packages astronomically higher than the average person working for them. But nowhere is this gap more evident than at Tesla, where Elon Musk's compensation was 2,522,203 times the median employee's pay.

A report by The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) – the largest federation of labor unions in the United States – revealed that CEOs now take over 300 times as much pay than working people. But that figure excludes Musk because his $158 billion compensation skews the numbers.

Including Musk, average S&P 500 CEO compensation reached $340.1 million in 2025, up roughly 1,700% from the previous year. Without Musk's Tesla pay package, the average rose 21%, from $18.9 million in 2024 to $22.8 million in 2025.