--- title: This CEO Makes 900 Times More Than His Typical Employee description: The Dodd-Frank law requires that publicly traded companies disclose CEO to median worker pay ratios, and some companies have huge gaps. authors: - name: Brad Tuttle role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/ bio: Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals. education: Columbia University School of Journalism, MS at_money_since: 2014 articles: 366 covers: - Business - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle - https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225 former_staff: true published: '2018-03-12T16:38:38.000Z' modified: '2024-04-17T10:08:18.000Z' section: Business tags: - CEO pay - CEOs - salary - worker pay word_count: 397 canonical: https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Gary R. Heminger, President, of Marathon Ashland Petroleum L](https://img.money.com/2018/03/ceopayratiomarathon-cr-94827927.jpg) *Gary R. Heminger, of Marathon Petroleum Corp.* If there's one thing that gets people more upset than [high CEO pay](https://money.com/ceo-pay-salary-compensation-increase/), it's when companies pay CEOs absurdly more than rank-and-file employees. Many big companies pay their CEOs 100 or even 300 times more than their typical workers. But the [*Wall Street Journal*](https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-underpaid-in-a-first-u-s-firms-reveal-how-much-they-pay-workers-1520766000) reports that one firm based in Ohio paid its CEO a whopping 935 times more than its median worker last year. The company in question is Marathon Petroleum Corp., the second-largest oil refiner in the U.S., which paid CEO Gary Heminger $19.7 million last year. That is obviously an awful lot of money. Still, Heminger wasn't even in the top 100 [highest-paid CEOs](https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos) in a recent list published by the AFL-CIO. How, then, did Marathon Petroleum wind up with what the *Journal* called "one of the biggest contrasts" in CEO-to-worker pay? The landmark Dodd-Frank requires that public companies disclose their CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio to the [Securities and Exchange Commission](https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-160.html), and a firm's ratio can be enormous if the CEO makes a fortune, the workers are paid a pittance, or both. Marathon Petroleum's ratio appears to extraordinarily high because many employees are part-timers at its Speedway gas station and convenience stores. Overall, median pay for Marathon workers appears to be about $21,000 per year, or more than 900 times less the company's CEO. But if you exclude the Speedway workers, median pay at Marathon goes up to nearly $126,000 per year, according to the *Journal*, for a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 156:1. That is still quite a huge gap, but it seems to be fairly typical for large publicly traded companies. The data analytics firm [Equilar](http://www.equilar.com/press-releases/94-equilar-ceo-pay-ratio-survey-results.html) recently surveyed 356 public companies, and found that the median CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio was 140:1. What's more, Marathon Petroleum doesn't have the highest CEO-to-worker pay ratio we've ever heard of. That dubious distinction goes to Fresh Del Monte Produce. The global fruit-and-vegetable distribution company paid CEO Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh $8.5 million last year. That's actually fairly modest as far as CEOs at large multi-national corporations. But as pointed out by [Inequality.org](https://inequality.org/great-divide/del-monte-pay-ratio-largest-to-date/), a website run by the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies, 80% of Del Monte's employees work in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kenya, and the Philippines, and median pay for company employees is just $5,833 per year. When you do the math, it shows that Del Monte's CEO made an insane 1,465 times more than the company's median worker. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Business", "item": "https://money.com/business/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Company Culture", "item": "https://money.com/company-culture/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "This CEO Makes 900 Times More Than His Typical Employee" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/", "name": "This CEO Makes 900 Times More Than His Typical Employee", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2018-03-12T16:38:38.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/ceo-pay-worker-ratio/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-17T10:08:18.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "This CEO Makes 900 Times More Than His Typical Employee", "articleSection": "Business", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2018/03/ceopayratiomarathon-cr-94827927.jpg", "width": 2000, "height": 1423, "caption": "Gary R. 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