Heres how much CEOs pay has gone up and down — but mostly up and up

Eight years ago, as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform, Congress required publicly traded U.S. corporations to annually report the ratio of the compensation of their CEO and their median (midpoint) worker.

CEO-to-worker pay ratio

Ratio between large firms CEO pay and the average of reported worker pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

CEO annual compensation is computed using the “options realized” compensation series, which includes salary, bonus, restricted stock grants, options exercised and long-term incentive payouts for CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms ranked by sales.

Ratio by sector

Average of CEOs and median employees annual pay by sector as of April 6 from Proxy Insight.

5,908-to-1
The CEO with the highest ratio on April 6 was Weight Watchers International Inc.s Mindy Grossman, whose $35 million take-home pay was 5,908 times her median workers (most employees work part time). The second-highest ratio was 4,987 to 1 for Mattel Inc. CEO Margaret Geogiadis. Most of Matells workforce is in Asia.

Opinions on CEO compensation

The following responses are from a survey conducted by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and included in a report, “Americans and CEO Pay: 2016 Public Perception Survey on CEO Compensation.”

CEO packages

Salary is only a fraction of the take-home compensation for CEOs. In 2016, two CEOs made more than $100 million in take-home pay. The majority of pay for the top CEOs was in stock. Below is Bloombergs breakdown for the three highest-paid CEOs in 2016 – the most recent year with complete totals for the top 500 companies.

Bloombergs website takes a look at the CEO pay ratio.

Current top pay
Each year, the Equilar 100 list of CEO compensation examines executive pay. These figures are from companies that have filed annual proxy statements by March 31 and are from April 11. Here are the top 30 CEOs, with pay in millions and the ratio listed in parentheses where available.