CEOs Screwing Workers with Sarah Anderson of the Global Economy Project at IPS and Co-Editor of Inequality.org

“At Amazon, the CEO got $213 million last year, and that was 6,474 times as much as median worker pay at the company, which was about $32,800.”

Sarah Anderson Director of the Global Economy Project at IPS and Co-Editor of Inequality.org

Executive Excess 2022

The CEOs at America’s largest low-wage employers are grabbing huge raises while workers and consumers struggle with rising costs.

Sarah Anderson and her co-authors at the Institute for Policy Studies found that more than half of our nation’s 100 largest low-wage employers changed their own rules to ensure huge payouts for CEOs in 2020 — while workers lost wages, jobs, and even their lives. On average, the CEOs at these rule-rigging firms pocketed 29 percent raises while their median worker pay fell by 2 percent. Learn more at: https://ips-dc.org/report-executive-excess-2022 

About Sarah Anderson

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is a co-editor of the IPS web site Inequality.org. Sarah’s research covers a wide range of international and domestic economic issues, including inequality, Wall Street reform, CEO pay, taxes, labor, and international trade and investment. Sarah is a well-known expert on executive compensation, as the lead author of more than 20 annual “Executive Excess” reports that have received extensive media coverage.

During the Obama administration, she served on the Investment Subcommittee of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy (ACIEP). In 2009, this subcommittee carried out a review of the U.S. model bilateral investment treaty. In 2000, she served on the staff of the bipartisan International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission (“Meltzer Commission”), commissioned by the U.S. Congress to evaluate the World Bank and IMF. Sarah is a co-author of the books Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2nd edition, 2005) and Alternatives to Economic Globalization (Berrett-Koehler, 2nd edition, 2004).

Prior to coming to IPS in 1992, Sarah was a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development and an editor for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. She holds a Masters in International Affairs from The American University and a BA in Journalism from Northwestern University.

Overview on Executive Excess Reports

Over two decades, Institute for Policy Studies researchers have examined how extremely high levels of compensation affect executive behavior. Such massive jackpots, we’ve found, give executives incentives to behave in ways that may boost short-term profits and expand their own paychecks at the expense of our nation’s long-term economic health. Tax dodging, mass layoffs, reckless financial deals, offshoring jobs, “creative accounting” — all of these appear to boost CEO pay. But they have dealt one body blow after another to the American middle class, leaving a deeply skewed distribution of income and wealth. See past reports at: https://ips-dc.org/global-economy/executive-excess/ 

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