Huffington Post reports that says fast food CEOs make 1,000 times more than workers. And its not just McDonald’s and Taco Bell. I was saddened to see Chipotle and Starbucks on the list as well.
According to a new report from progressive think tank Demos, “Fast Food Failure: How the CEO-to-Worker Pay Disparity Undermines the Industry and the Overall Economy,” the gap between the highest and lowest earners in the US economy continues to grow and it is nowhere more apparent than in the fast food industry. So what? Fast food income inequality has serious repercussions not only for the fast food industry, but across the entire American economy as a whole.
According to the report, the compensation of fast food CEOs in 2012 was more than 1,200 times the earnings of the average fast food worker. Proxy disclosures recently released by fast food companies reveal that the ratio remained above 1,000-to-1 in 2013. Pay disparity in the fast food industry is a result of two factors. Escalating compensation to CEOs, coupled with stagnant poverty level wages received by typical workers in the industry make the industry among — if not the single — worst in the nation. It turns out that fast food CEOs are some of the highest paid workers in America, yet fast food workers are the lowest paid in the economy. The average CEO at a fast food companies earned $23.8 million in 2013 and the average hourly wage of fast food employees is $9.09, or less than $19,000 per year for a full-time worker, though most fast food workers do not get full-time hours.
“For most of these companies, CEOs earn hundreds of times the incomes of the average non-supervisory and production worker, even in years of lackluster sales.”
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