Executive pay climbed again in 2025—and the CEO-to-worker gap kept widening

The gap between CEO and worker pay hit a four-year high in 2025, with median CEO compensation rising 13% to $4.75 million, per new data.

Elon Musk earned more in fiscal year 2025 than any other public company executive—by an almost incomprehensible margin.

His $158.4 billion Tesla stock award, reinstated by the Delaware Supreme Court after years of litigation, placed him atop the annual executive compensation rankings published by C-Suite Comp, whose data covers approximately 3,700 public company chief executives and whose figures reflect fiscal year 2025 for most companies. The award was so large C-Suite Comp removed Musk as a statistical outlier before calculating broader market trends.

Exclude Musk, and median CEO total compensation rose 13% year-over-year to $4.75 million, while the average climbed 26% to $8.96 million. Both figures continue a recovery that began in 2024, after median pay declined in 2022 and 2023. The CEO-to-worker pay gap continued widening: The median pay ratio reached 99-to-1 in 2025, up from 92-to-1 in 2024, 85-to-1 in 2023, and 84-to-1 in 2022. The average pay ratio jumped to 216-to-1 from 175-to-1 the prior year.

Following the SpaceX and Tesla founder, the rankings were dominated by equity-heavy packages. Figma CEO Dylan Field took home $864.4 million—$861.9 million of it in stock awards—making him the second-highest-paid chief executive in the dataset. Welltower CEO Shankh Mitra followed at $821.1 million, with $813.2 million in stock. Opendoor Technologies CEO Kaz Nejatian ranked fourth at $741.1 million, his entire package in stock awards. Rivian CEO Robert Scaringe rounded out the top five at $402.6 million, the bulk of it in option awards.

Technology was the top-paying sector for CEOs, led by Field. Real estate ranked second, led by Mitra. The health care sector’s highest earner was Summit Therapeutics co-CEO Mahkam Zanganeh at $246 million, which included an option award modification the company disclosed in its filings.

The pay ratio figures show the gap between CEOs and their workforces has widened every year since 2022. Musk’s Tesla posted the highest ratio in the dataset at 2,522,203-to-1, based on a median Tesla worker salary of $62,786. Liberty Broadband’s Martin Patterson ranked second at 36,194-to-1—his total compensation was $1.2 million, but median employee pay at the company was $33. Opendoor’s Nejatian ranked fourth at 7,581-to-1 against a median employee salary of $97,759.

The trend has drawn scrutiny from investors and shareholder advocates alike, with Warren Buffett warning in his final Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter executives are increasingly driven by what peers are earning.

Chief financial officers also saw gains across every market segment. Among S&P 500 companies, median CFO compensation reached $5.94 million, up 3.1% year-over-year. Across the Russell 3000, the median was $2.66 million, up 6.7%. The overall CFO market posted a median of $1.94 million, up 10.6%. The top of the rankings was led by Summit Therapeutics’ Manmeet Soni—who holds a dual COO/CFO role—at $249.1 million in option awards, followed by Welltower CFO Timothy McHugh at $167 million and Fermi Inc. CFO Miles Everson at $134.2 million.

Not every C-suite role moved in the same direction. Chief technology officers in the technology sector saw median compensation rise 10% to $2.59 million, while the average climbed 32% to $4.88 million—the dataset’s five-year trend shows tech executive pay declined in 2022 and 2023 before recovering in 2024 and rising further in 2025. Figma’s CTO Kris Rasmussen led all technology executives at $175 million, followed by Hims & Hers Health CTO Elshenawy at $60.9 million and Symbotic CTO James Kuffner at $37 million. Chief information officers moved in the opposite direction: Median CIO pay fell 7.3% to $1.34 million and the average dropped 19% to $2.13 million, reversing gains from prior years. The highest-paid CIO in the dataset was Humana’s Japan A. Mehta at $9.6 million, followed by Applied Materials’ Brice Hill at $8.5 million.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com