the pay gap between ceos and their workers grew wider last year among companies paying the lowest wages the average gap between ceo and median worker pay jumped to 670 to 1 up from 604 to 1 in 2020 according to a new report by the institute for policy studies ips a progressive think tank based in washington dc the report looked at the 300 publiclyheld us corporations that had the lowest median wages in 2020 among the 300 companies 49 had ratios of ceotoworker pay above 1000 to 1 pay increases for workers did not keep pace with inflation at more than onethird of the companies in the study in fact a typical worker’s wages fell at 69 of those companies median worker pay increased on average by 3556 or 17 to 23968 a year while the average ceo pay at the 300 companies in the report rose by 25 million or 31 to 106 million a year those regarded as essential workers during the pandemic including callcenter operators and warehouse workers received the lowest wages ips found “so much for the hope that the heroic pandemictime sacrifices of lowwage workers would lead to a corporate rethinking on pay equity” the authors of the study sarah anderson and sam pizzigati wrote “instead executive compensation has climbed further into the stratosphere while inflation has stripped away the earnings gains of most us workers” of the 106 companies where median worker pay did not keep pace with inflation 67 spent money on stock buybacks totaling 437 billion a strategy that further inflates executive stockbased pay the researchers added “throughout the pandemic essential workers have labored heroically but while workers risked their lives bosses have reaped the rewards” anderson and pizzigati wrote lowe’s low spent the most on stock buybacks while also cutting median pay for its workers over the past year “with the 13 billion lowe’s alone spent on share repurchases the company could have given each of its 325000 employees a 40000 raise” the report said lowe’s did not immediately reply to a request to comment the researchers also said that federal contracts helped boost ceo pay and widen the pay gap with workers such contracts included deals to service federal student loans and operate obamacare and medicare call centers the report said maximus mms and amazon amzn had the most amount of government funding among the 300 companies surveyed they had ceoworker pay ratios of 208 to 1 and 6474 to 1 respectively “our employees are our top priority since becoming ceo bruce caswell has worked to improve compensation reduce outofpocket health care costs and improve employees’ work environments” a maximus spokesperson told marketwatch a separate maximus statement also detailed its method of determining executive pay by performance market rate and experience amazon spokesperson kelly nantel said ips’s calculation of ceo andy jassy’s 2021 pay included stock awards that andy jassy received when he transitioned from the ceo of aws to ceo of amazon last year “the way the sec rules work we are required to report that grant as total compensation for 2021 when in reality it will vest over the next 10 years “nantel told marketwatch “what this equates to from an annual compensation perspective is competitive with that of ceos at other large companies and was approved by the amazon board of directors”