It’s certainly a happy new year for the 100 highest paid Chief Executive Officers in Canada.
A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) says as of 9:23 am Friday (Jan. 2) they will have already made what the average worker earns all year.
Topping the list, which looks at 2024 numbers, is Shopify’s CEO at $205.5 million, the highest paid CEO in the 19 years the centre has been compiling the list.
It also includes the highest ‘minimum wage’ for a CEO to get on the list, at $7.2 million.
The centre says since 2020, CEO pay is up by 49% and workers’ pay is up by 15%.
“The top CEOs make $7,812 an hour, so it only takes a little over eight hours to make the $65,548 annual pay of the average worker,” says David Macdonald, CCPA Senior Economist. “The rich are living the high life while regular Canadians and workers struggle with inflation.”
The centre says inflation is pushing up costs, and salaries are not keeping up, effectively leaving workers with a 3% pay cut in 2024.
Officials point to average rent going up by 26 per cent and utilities by 23 per cent, while food prices climbed too.
They say beef was up by 39 per cent, chicken by 27 per cent, and pasta by 47 per cent.
“All that extra money Canadians are paying on inflated prices goes somewhere: corporate profits,” says Macdonald. “CEO pay is mostly bonuses now, bonuses tied in some form to those corporate profits. When inflation drives profits, it also drives CEO pay through the stratosphere.”
The centre says CEOs now make 248 times more than the average worker wage in Canada.
