Your electricity bill rose 40% while utility CEO pay rose 47% — now, voters are taking it to the ballot boxes

Enthusiasm for CEO compensation is, well, little than electrical these days.

The information speaks for itself. The mean CEO wage has risen 1,094% from 1978 to 2024. It has risen lone 26% for the mean idiosyncratic implicit the aforesaid period. (1)

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Utility CEOs, successful particular, are seeing large wage bumps portion inferior bills ascent for Americans who aren't seeing the aforesaid wealth successful their pockets. Some Americans fearfulness the spread volition lone widen further, sowing the seeds of large legislative pushback.

Companies are pumping the state connected CEO salaries

There's a stark quality successful however inferior CEOs and their employees are compensated.

The top-paid CEOs reviewed by the Energy and Policy Institute earned a combined $220 cardinal successful 2025, and the least-paid reaped implicit $16 million. (2) For context, the emblematic U.S. idiosyncratic earns astir $70,000. (3)

And the wage spread has widened implicit the past six decades. In 1965, a CEO could expect taking location $21 for each $1 earned by workers. In 2024, a CEO could expect taking location $281 for each $1 workers earned. These numbers see salary, bonus, semipermanent inducement payouts, and worth of stock-related components that accrue aft options oregon banal awards are granted. (2)

Of the 51 inferior CEOs reviewed by the Institute, mean compensation roseate 16% from 2024 to 2025. Over fractional received a wage summation of implicit $1 million. (2) On the hook for the bill: Utility customers who already wage for bigger substance and energy bills.

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As utilities prices spike, CEOs are rewarded

CEOs whitethorn beryllium incentivized to prioritize shareholders implicit inferior customers, driving up vigor costs for mean Americans.

Think astir it.

The outgo of energy for homes roseate implicit 7% from February 2025 to 2026 (6), acold outpacing inflation. (7) Electricity prices person risen 40% since 2021. (4) Average inferior CEO compensation has risen adjacent faster — 47 percent since 2018, outpacing ostentation and the mean wage maturation for American workers. (5)

The Institute highlights instrumentality connected equity (ROE) programs that necktie CEO bonuses straight to the profits that utilities cod from customers. In different words: The higher the margin, the greater the benefit. This benefits shareholders, whose banal appreciates.