'Low Wage 100' Companies Turn a Blind Eye to Government Benefit Cuts While Showering CEOs in Cash

Chief executive officers leading America's lowest-paying corporations pulled in record-breaking compensation packages averaging £13.8 million in 2025, according to a striking new analysis published by the Institute for Policy Studies.

The report reveals that the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio across these top 100 S&P 500 companies climbed to 614-to-1, demonstrating a widening gulf between top executives and front-line employees.

While corporate leaders enjoyed massive financial gains, median worker pay lagged severely behind a 25.9 per cent national inflation rate, leaving ordinary staff earning less in real terms.

Compounding these economic pressures, front-line employees across retail and delivery sectors faced unprecedented challenges, including historic cuts to government assistance programmes such as Medicaid and SNAP.

Furthermore, the report highlights how workers at major firms like Walmart and DoorDash navigated heightened vulnerability amid aggressive immigration enforcement actions and workplace ICE raids.

Critics argue that corporate silence on these social crises stands in sharp contrast to the aggressive political lobbying undertaken by executive teams to secure favourable tax legislation.

As economic insecurity deepens for millions of households, the findings renew intense public debate over corporate social responsibility, executive compensation caps, and structural income inequality.

The wealth gap has been widening for years, but the latest data shows the gulf between bosses and workers at America's largest low-wage corporations has reached staggering levels.

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio at these 100 S&P 500 companies with the lowest median pay rose to 614-to-1 in 2025, up from 574-to-1 in 2019.

Executive Excess Report Reveals Stark Inequality

The IPS's 32nd annual Executive Excess report zeroes in on corporations like Walmart, DoorDash and Target, examining how their leadership has pulled in more money while workers' wages stagnate.

Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation within the Low Wage 100 rose 41.4 per cent in nominal terms, more than double the 20.7 per cent gain in median worker pay over the same stretch.

Average median worker pay at these companies was just $36,571 in 2025, including part-time workers. That pay growth has even lagged behind the overall inflation rate of 25.9 per cent across those years, meaning workers are effectively earning less in real terms.

Sarah Anderson, who wrote the report and directs the Global Economic Project at the institute, says sky-high CEO pay has placed these executives 'on a remote economic planet from the rest of us.'

When you're at that level, it's really hard to fathom what it's like for people who have to worry about feeding their families, or even whether they're going to be able to come home to their family at the end of the day.

The report also highlights how these companies spent a combined $108.6 billion on stock buybacks in 2025 alone, a move that inflates share prices and boosts stock-based executive compensation.

Walmart topped the list with $8.1 billion in share repurchases, money that IPS calculated could have funded a $3,851 bonus for each of the retailer's 2.1 million employees.

Companies Silent as Workers Face ICE Raids and Benefit Cuts

Beyond the widening wealth gap, what really stands out in this year's report is that corporate leaders have remained silent while their workers face unprecedented challenges.

Anderson says she was struck by the historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, plus the wave of terror from ICE enforcement that has targeted employees at these very companies.

Take Walmart again. Of the Low Wage 100, the retailer has the largest number of employees on public assistance: 16,055 on Medicaid across six states and 15,515 on SNAP across nine states.

Yet Walmart executives did not publicly speak out against the cuts to those benefit programmes in the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The situation gets wilder when you consider these 100 companies collectively employ 1,282 registered federal lobbyists who have supported policies like that bill, which also handed tax cuts to corporations.

Multiple DoorDash drivers have been arrested by ICE across the country, and in July 2026 an ICE agent in Maine fatally shot a driver who was authorised to work in the US and was not the target of the arrest warrant.

Target has also seen ICE agents come into its retail stores. In January 2026, in a Minnesota store, ICE detained employees who were US citizens, prompting protests. Though the company later endorsed a letter from 60 CEOs calling for de-escalation in Minnesota, Target did not comment on that specific incident.

A Target spokesperson confirmed that the company has no cooperative agreements with ICE. DoorDash and Walmart did not respond to requests for comment.

'If some of these very powerful CEOs had called a joint press conference and said they were not going to tolerate immigration officers going after their employees on their own property, it would have made such a difference to people over the past year to see them standing up for their workers,' said Anderson.

The Institute for Policy Studies supports policy changes that would rein in stock buybacks and increase taxes on companies with certain CEO-to-worker pay ratios. But Anderson said corporations could be doing more to help their workers voluntarily right now.

'We're in a precarious moment in our country, and it would be great to see corporate leaders stepping up and defending people's basic rights and doing what they can to make sure that people can cover their basic needs.'

That's what we need for a healthy democracy and economy, and it would be good for these businesses themselves to have a workforce that is not living in such extreme insecurity.

Corporate representatives at targeted retail and technology firms largely declined to provide formal responses on internal remuneration structures or political lobbying priorities. As public scrutiny mounts across Western economies, policymakers face growing pressure to address the structural drivers of modern economic insecurity.