1 The Northern Pacific Railway (NP) completed the third independent transcontinental railroad on August 22, 1883, linking Chicago with Seattle. 2  The Completion Ceremony was held on September 8, 1883, with former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant contributing to driving the Final Spike.
The average pay package last year was $22.6 million, up from $20.7 million in 2013, according to an analysis of companies' proxy disclosures by executive-compensation data firm Equilar. The average gain in total compensation for the 200 highest-paid U.S. CEOs worked out to 9.1 percent last year.
Top CEOs make more than 300 times the average worker. In between 1978 and 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO pay increased by almost 1,000%, according to a report released on Sunday by the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, typical workers in the U.S. saw a pay raise of just 11% during that same period. 1  With these increases in mind, it should come as no surprise that the ratio between average American CEO pay and worker pay is now 303-to-1.