CEO pay rises yet again, despite global pandemic that slashed profits worldwide

As COVID-19 ravaged the world last year, CEOs' big pay packages seemed to be under as much threat as everything else.

Fortunately for those CEOs, many had boards of directors willing to see the pandemic as an extraordinary event beyond their control. Half of the 100 largest U.S. employers of low-wage workers adjusted their CEO pay packages last year, sweetening rewards for chief executives during the pandemic while cutting pay for average workers, according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. As a result, pay packages rose yet again last year for the CEOs of the biggest companies in America, even though the pandemic sent the economy to its worst quarter on record and slashed corporate profits around the world. The median pay package for a CEO at an S&P 500 company hit $12.7 million in 2020, according to data analyzed by Equilar for the Associated Press. That means half the CEOs in the survey made more, and half made less. It's 5% more than the median pay for that same group of CEOs in 2019 and an acceleration from the 4.1% climb in last year's survey.