CEOs Pass Average Canadian Salary by January 2nd

January 3rd, 2007

Warning: If you attempt to perform a similar calculation for U.S. executives and workers, your head might explode. Scanners style.

Well, these guys did it, and lived to write up the results. In 2004, American average CEO/worker pay ratio was 431:1.

Via: ctv.ca:

By the time most Canadians drag themselves into work on Tuesday after the holidays, the country’s highest-paid CEOs will already have earned the average employee’s annual salary.

By 9:46 a.m. Tuesday, the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have earned an average Canadian’s salary of $38,010, says a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

For minimum-wage workers, the country’s top earners made their entire salary average of $15,931 by New Year’s Day.

“When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means,” Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice, told The Canadian Press.

“Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around.”

The statistics are based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada and Report on Business magazine’s most recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.

According to the figures, by the end of the workday Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.

“I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close,” said Mackenzie. “Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people’s minds.”

“How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and . . . if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what’s left for the rest of us?”

Posted in Economy | Top Of Page

2 Responses to “CEOs Pass Average Canadian Salary by January 2nd”

  1. JK says:

    “Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people’s minds.”

    Not once you realize how much more advanced these minds of our minders are from our lowly 386 units.

  2. fallout says:

    Neo-feudalism is alive and well.

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