One Stunning Statistic That Will Outrage Anyone Working at a Chain Resaurant


If you're a fast food employee making minimum wage ($15,080 at full time with zero vacation), your CEO is probably making 721 times more than you with an average pay of $10,872,390 in 2013, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.

Or, in other awful words: the heads of fast food chains make more in half a day than most of their employees make in a full year.

What's more, CEO salaries have completed ballooned since 2007, when they were just at a 609-1 ratio with their workers at the bottom of the pay floor.

Image Credit: EPI

The background: From 1978 to 2013, average CEO pay has almost skyrocketed an astonishing 1,000% while the pay of the average worker has increased just 10%. Tipped workers make the same base rate they did nearly 25 years ago in 1991. The minimum wage for tipped workers is an astonishing $2.13. If workers' pay had kept up with productivity, the minimum wage would be $22 an hour.

What's more, most fast-food workers aren't teenagers looking to pick up a little extra cash. Sixty percent of employees working for such chains are over the age of 20. More adults are working in fast food not because it sounds like an appealing career option (low pay, long hours and the constant smell of deep fryers - what's not to love?), but because they don't have a choice.

The report "confirms what we have long known," McDonald's crew member and Charleston, S.C., resident Cherri Delesline told Mother Jones. "While CEOs make millions of dollars in profits, we still can't afford to pay our rent or buy clothes for our children."

International Business Times' Angelo Young points out that while the minimum wage did increase in 2009, five years of inflationary growth has put workers right back at the starting point. In fact, if the minimum wage doesn't increase soon, workers might fall behind even that.

The worst offenders are Starbucks' Howard Schultz, who made $137.5+ million; Yum Brands' David C. Novak, who made $21.2 million; and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.'s Steve Ells, who rolled in $13.6 million. It might be great if your boss supports gay marriage or claims to only use high-end organic ingredients, but you'd probably prefer he shut up and just put some damn money in your wallet.