AFL-CIO Report Highlights Growing Pay Gap, Citing Elon Musk and Donald Trump

Elon Musk received over 2.5m times as much compensation at Tesla as the company’s average worker, according to a new report on the growing gap between top corporate executives and their workers.

Musk’s $158.3bn pay deal was an outlier but came as the gap between CEO and worker pay continued to grow. Excluding Musk, last year the average ratio of CEO to worker pay for the top S&P 500 companies was 312 to 1, up from a 285:1 ratio in 2024. With Musk, the average pay ratio was 5,387:1, according to the executive pay watch report released this week by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US.

“In 2025, Elon Musk received the median Tesla worker’s pay every 4.23 seconds – less time than it takes to read this sentence,” states the report. “A majority of S&P 500 CEOs made more in one day than the median US worker made in one year.”

Average CEO pay, excluding Musk, was $22.8m in 2025, up from $18.9m in 2024. With Tesla accounted for, the average increases to $340.1m.

The report notes workers’ share of US national income has fallen to the lowest level since the second world war.

The report also looks at Donald Trump’s income in 2025. At $2.2bn, largely from his crypto holdings, Trump’s income rose nearly 254% from 2024. The median US worker would require 43,154 years to earn what Trump received in 2025.

“This is political grift unlike what we have ever seen in our lifetimes, perhaps ever, but it only tells part of the story of how CEOs and the Trump administration has rigged our economy to enrich themselves at the expense of working people,” said Fred Redmond, AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer.

“Trump’s radical budget bill that Republicans rammed through Congress last year, it made drastic cuts to healthcare, food assistance for children and families in order to give massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.”

The report cited data demonstrating the economic struggles of most Americans; 33% of US adults have no retirement savings, 37% of adults do not have enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense, 26% of US adults have skipped medical care due to costs, and 23% of renters in the US have fallen behind on rent over the past year.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

“As President Trump said, he has a lot of assets because he was a massively successful businessman prior to becoming President, which was why he was elected to office in the first place,” said a White House spokesperson in an email. “All of the President’s assets are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions. There are no conflicts of interest.”