The Staggering Cost of US Corporate Leadership

Executive Excess 2007: The Staggering Cost of US Corporate Leadership

With leading Presidential candidates turning up the heat on overpaid CEOs, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy documents for the first time the extreme pay gaps that have opened up not just between U.S. business leaders and American workers, but between U.S. business leaders and leaders elsewhere in American - and European - society.

KEY FINDINGS:

• CEOs of large U.S. companies last year averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, a calculation based on data from an Associated Press survey of 386 Fortune 500 companies.

• The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, pocketed an average $657.5 million, Forbes magazine estimates. That's 22,255 times the pay of an average U.S. worker.

• Workers on the bottom rung of the economy have just received their first federal minimum wage increase in a decade. But the inflation-adjusted value of the new minimum, despite the hike, stands 7 percent below the minimum wage level a decade ago. CEO pay, in that decade, has increased over inflation by roughly 45 percent.