Fair500 → Analysis → Narrowest pay gaps
A narrow pay ratio is easy to read as evidence of a well-run, equitable employer. Usually it is evidence of something more specific and less flattering: an unusual chief executive pay arrangement, or a workforce that contains no low-paid people.
Having looked at the widest gaps, the obvious next question is who sits at the other end. The answer requires more care than the ranking suggests, because a small ratio can be produced by at least four quite different situations, only one of which resembles what most people mean by a fair employer.
The table below excludes companies whose chief executive takes a purely nominal salary, since Tesla discloses $0 and Block about a dollar, because a ratio computed on those figures is not measuring anything. Fair500 scores those companies neutrally rather than crowning them.
| # | Company | Sector | Pay ratio | Median worker pay | CEO pay (3-yr avg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NVR, Inc.NVR | Consumer Discretionary | 23:1 | $88,431 | $2.0M |
| 2 | Palantir TechnologiesPLTR | Technology | 23:1 | $235,115 | $5.5M |
| 3 | Vici PropertiesVICI | Real Estate | 27:1 | $468,119 | $12.7M |
| 4 | Pinnacle West CapitalPNW | Utilities | 28:1 | $182,127 | $5.2M |
| 5 | Expand EnergyEXE | Energy | 29:1 | $158,503 | $4.5M |
| 6 | Everest GroupEG | Financials | 30:1 | $187,057 | $5.6M |
| 7 | DTE EnergyDTE | Utilities | 32:1 | $158,285 | $5.1M |
| 8 | Alphabet Inc.GOOGL | Communication Services | 33:1 | $310,826 | $10.2M |
| 9 | CoinbaseCOIN | Financials | 33:1 | $217,526 | $7.2M |
| 10 | Dell TechnologiesDELL | Technology | 40:1 | $78,796 | $3.2M |
| 11 | Alliant EnergyLNT | Utilities | 41:1 | $177,645 | $7.2M |
| 12 | Texas Pacific Land CorporationTPL | Energy | 41:1 | $162,405 | $6.6M |
| 13 | AmazonAMZN | Consumer Discretionary | 42:1 | $40,206 | $1.7M |
| 14 | Oracle CorporationORCL | Technology | 43:1 | $98,899 | $4.3M |
| 15 | Regeneron PharmaceuticalsREGN | Health Care | 43:1 | $174,138 | $7.4M |
| 16 | Teledyne TechnologiesTDY | Technology | 43:1 | $65,616 | $2.8M |
| 17 | Williams CompaniesWMB | Energy | 43:1 | $143,269 | $6.2M |
| 18 | Ball CorporationBALL | Materials | 44:1 | $91,248 | $4.0M |
| 19 | Jack Henry & AssociatesJKHY | Financials | 45:1 | $93,193 | $4.2M |
| 20 | CopartCPRT | Industrials | 46:1 | $44,620 | $2.1M |
This is the most common explanation on the list, and it is largely a fact about industry structure rather than pay policy.
Look at the medians: Vici Properties $468,119, Alphabet $310,826, Palantir $235,115, Coinbase $217,526, Everest Group $187,057, Pinnacle West $182,127, Alliant Energy $177,645, Regeneron $174,138. These are companies staffed overwhelmingly by engineers, scientists, traders, actuaries and licensed technical workers. There is no large population of hourly staff to sit at the midpoint.
Utilities appear repeatedly here for exactly this reason, with Pinnacle West at 28:1, DTE at 32:1 and Alliant at 41:1, and the sector's median worker pay of $149,396 is the second highest in the index. A utility employs linemen, plant operators and engineers, most of them unionised and none of them part-time. The narrow ratio is real, and it reflects who the industry hires.
Alphabet is the striking case at scale: 190,820 employees, a median of $310,826, and a ratio of 33:1. That combination is not available to a company that employs cashiers.
Several narrow ratios are timing artefacts in reverse. Amazon appears at 42:1 with CEO compensation averaging $1.7 million, a figure that would be low for a company a thousandth its size. Andy Jassy received a very large equity award on appointment, structured to vest over many years, and the annual disclosures since have been modest because no new grant has been made.
This is the mirror image of the mega-grant problem. Fair500's three-year averaging catches the spike years; it cannot reach back to a grant made outside the window. So a company can look unusually restrained simply because its chief executive was paid a decade forward at some earlier point. Amazon's median of $40,206 is also, notably, not high.
Some executives receive little disclosed compensation because their economic interest arrives elsewhere. Berkshire Hathaway reports about 4:1 because Warren Buffett's salary is $100,000 and he is compensated as a shareholder. Apollo Global Management reports 4:1 on a median of $189,150 for similar reasons of partnership structure.
Take-Two Interactive is the clearest illustration of the problem, and the reason it does not appear on this site at all. Its chief executive is compensated through an external management company rather than by Take-Two directly, so the Summary Compensation Table records only a small residue of the real arrangement and the disclosed ratio works out at about 2:1. The company also lost money across the three-year window, so neither of Fair500's two measures can be computed for it. A figure that accurate and that uninformative is a good reminder that a very low ratio is more often a sign of an unusual pay structure than of an equitable one.
The category everyone assumes they are looking at does exist. NVR, the homebuilder, sits at 23:1 with a median of $88,431 and CEO compensation averaging $2.0 million: a real salary, a well-paid workforce, and a company that has simply not participated in the escalation of executive pay. Texas Pacific Land at 41:1 and Williams Companies at 43:1 are similar. Oracle's 43:1 across 141,000 employees is notable at scale.
These are the cases where the ratio means roughly what a casual reader would take it to mean.
Three of the four routes above have nothing to do with whether a company treats its workers well, and the largest category, a professionalised high-wage workforce, is a description of an industry rather than a choice. A biotech firm employing 3,000 PhDs will beat a supermarket chain on this measure permanently, regardless of how either behaves.
This is why Fair500 does not score companies on the pay gap alone. The second measure, median worker pay against the profit each employee generates, asks a question the ratio cannot: whether the people doing the work capture a reasonable share of what the business earns. It is unaffected by executive pay entirely.
The two measures frequently disagree, and the disagreements are informative. A company can have a narrow pay gap and a poor share, which is the signature of a firm where everyone including the chief executive is paid modestly relative to enormous profits per head. Several of the energy and real-estate names on this list fit that description: Texas Pacific Land generates $3.9 million of profit per employee and pays a median of $162,405, which is a high wage and a small fraction of what each worker produces.
How to use these two measures together. A narrow pay gap tells you the distance between the top and middle of a company is small. A high pay-versus-profit share tells you the middle is being paid well relative to what the business earns. Only a company scoring well on both has a claim to the word "fair", and the combined view on the map is where to find them.
One thing, and it is not nothing: the absence of an extreme executive package. A company cannot post a 30:1 ratio while paying its chief executive $90 million, whatever its workforce looks like. When you see a low ratio at a company with a large, ordinary workforce, such as Oracle at 43:1 with 141,000 staff or Dell at 40:1 with 97,000, that is a real signal about executive compensation policy, because the compositional explanations are unavailable.
The rule of thumb is the reverse of the one for wide gaps. There, a low median told you to discount the number. Here, a large and ordinary workforce is what tells you the number means something.