Last year, the median Target worker salary did not even keep pace with inflation, rising by less than 4 percent to just $25,501.
Did the giant retailer lack the money to make sure wages kept up with rising prices?
No, just the opposite. In 2021, Target spent $7.2 billion of their extra cash on stock buybacks. That would've been enough to give every one of their 450,000 employees a $16,000 raise.
Last year, Target CEO Brian Cornell made $19.8 million, which is 775 times more than the median pay for his employees.
The Institute for Policy Studies looked at 300 low-wage employers and found that the average gap between CEO and worker pay rose to 670 to 1 in 2021. That was up from an already obscene 604 to 1 the year before.
Among the companies where worker pay fell below inflation, about two-thirds spent huge sums on stock buybacks to further enrich their CEOs. With such extreme unfairness, it's no wonder we're seeing record numbers of workers quitting their jobs and a surge in unionization.
Opinion | Steps Biden Should Take to Rein in Excessive CEO Pay | Sarah Anderson (commondreams.org)
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