Fair500 → Analysis
Pieces on what the pay-ratio disclosures show across the index, and, just as often, what they don't.
Fair500 compiles four figures for 494 S&P 500 companies from their own SEC filings. These articles work through what those figures support, what they don't, and where the obvious reading of a number turns out to be wrong.
The Dodd-Frank rule that produced the number, the five significant choices it leaves to companies, and the three things it leaves out entirely.
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Among the 25 widest ratios in the index, CEO pay sits at the 72nd percentile and median worker pay at the 10th. The extremes are made at the bottom of the fraction.
The most important caveat on this site
Broadcom's disclosed CEO compensation ran $161.8M, then $2.6M, then $205.3M in consecutive years. Why Fair500 averages over three.
Methodology, argued
A practical guide to the table where executive pay lives, column by column, how to verify a total, and the two traps that produce wrong answers.
For anyone checking our work
The 25 largest gaps in the index, and the three quite different phenomena that produce them.
Ranked list · 3,669:1 at the top
Four routes to a small ratio, only one of which resembles what most people mean by a fair employer.
Ranked list · 23:1 at the top
The highest median employee compensation in the index, and why a high median says more about hiring than generosity.
Ranked list · up to $388,200
From under $2,000 to over $95 million per head. What that spread reveals, and why it reframes the question of worker pay.
Ranked list · four orders of magnitude