If American income inequality had a poster child, it
would be the fast food industry.
Today, CEOs at leading fast food companies pocket
more than 1,200 times more than their average employees, according to a report
by Demos, an economic policy think tank. In comparison, the average CEO at
S&P 500 companies today makes about 200 times more than typical
employees.
It hasn't always been this way. Back in 1950, CEOs
took home about 20 times as much money as
their average workers. Take a look at how CEO-to-worker pay ratios have changed
across industries since 2000.
"It's true in many industries but fast food is
the primary example: The gains from economic growth are being entirely awarded
to people at the top of the income scale," Catherine Ruetschlin, author of
the Demos report cited in the
graphic, told HuffPost in April.
"It's not a surprising finding that it's the worst industry within the
worst sector."
There are many reasons the pay gap in the fast food
industry is so wide. One reason is that the fast food industry has created jobs at a faster rate
than other industries for more than a decade, and for the most part these
jobs don't pay well. Because the federal minimum wage is so
low and hasn't been raised since 2009, worker pay has stagnated while
executives have received huge boosts in compensation.
In 2013, fast food CEOs made about four times more
than they did in 2000, according to the Demos report. In the same 2000-2013
period, worker pay rose only about .3 percent when adjusted for inflation. The
average fast food worker took home about $19,000
in 2013.
And even while making such low wages, nine out of 10
fast food workers have been victims of wage theft, like having to work
off-the-clock, not being paid for overtime work, or having managers falsify
time sheets, according to a study by Hart Research.
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