Canada’s top CEOs have already made more than average worker will in 2024

A report has found that the average pay for the top CEOs in 2023 broke an all-time record for CCPA's data series that began in 2008, with an average pay of $14.9 million.

Even though 2024 has just begun, Canada’s top 100 highest-paid CEOs have already made more than the average worker.

That’s according to a new report released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which says that the CEOs’ pay broke “every record in the book” in 2022.

According to CCPA’s data, the top CEOs make $7,162 an hour, which means it takes little over eight hours for them to make $60,607 — the annual pay of the average worker in Canada.

“If we say that both (CEOs and workers) get paid vacations, like New Year’s Day, then by Tuesday, January 2, 2024, at 9:27 a.m. those CEOs will have already gotten what the average worker makes in a year,” CCPA Senior Economist and author of the report David Macdonald said in a statement.

The report found that the average pay for the top CEOs in 2022 broke an all-time record for the think tank’s data series that began in 2008, with an average pay of $14.9 million. That’s 246 times the average worker’s pay in Canada, up from 241 times in 2021, when the average was $14.3 million.

In 2008, top CEOs’ pay average was $7.4 million, or less than half what it is now, according to the report.

Record-high inflation over the last couple of years has only increased CEOs’ pay, the report says. It explains that bonuses, based on performance, are driving CEOs’ pay, but the threshold for bonuses isn’t typically adjusted for inflation, allowing the CEOs to hit their targets more easily given the higher revenue.

“It’s inflation that’s been ultimately driving these bonuses, due to historic profits in the corporate sector,” the report states.