Typical CEOs Get Paid About $3K an Hour

by Angela Nazworth | May 25, 2012 12:35 pm

Reeling in a $10 million paycheck would probably be a huge disappointment to head honchos at corporate behemoths[1] like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL[2]), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL[3]) and CBS (NYSE:CBS[4]), but for most Americans, it’s an unfathomable amount of moolah.

Based on a new study conducted by The Associated Press[5], CEOs of typical publicly owned companies on average made $9.6 million in 2011. That figure, which is up more than 6% from 2010 results, is the highest it has been since 2006. That’s 12 times the total of gross income that President Obama reported last year.

Although the study showed a decline in exorbitant cash bonuses that top leaders tend to earn, stock rewards went up. Since stock value and company success often go hand-in-hand, the logic is that stock options will motivate a CEO to boost performance.

Compared to the $137 million Simon Property Group (NYSE:SPG[6]) CEO David Simon made last year, $10 million is chump change. Note: About $132 million of Simon’s salary was in stock options.

In a separate report[7], the AP conducted some math to drum up a few interesting tidbits on just how much these lofty figures mean to the average American worker. Here are some of the findings:

• It would take a minimum-wage ($7.25 per hour) earner nearly 9,096 years to make $137 million.
• A person making $39,312 a year (the national average), would have to work 3,489 years to make as much as Simon did in 2011.
• A minimum-wage worker would have to put in 636 years to make the median CEO salary.
• It would take a person making the national average salary about 244 years to make close to $10 million.
• Based on a 60-hour work week, Simon made $43,963.64 an hour.
• Typical CEOs make much less an hour than Simon, but a mind-boggling amount more than the average person. Based on a 60-hour work week, the average CEO gets paid $3,072.84 an hour — that’s more than some people make a month.

You can glean more jaw-dropping stats by reading the complete report from the AP[8].

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