On October 1st, according to media reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk salary earned 2.28 billion US dollars from Tesla in 2018, including his salary, stock options, stock appreciation and other allowances. The median wage for Tesla employees is about $56,000, while Elon Musk salary annual income is 40,668 times the company’s median salary.

Ranked second in the median gap between CEO income and employee wages, Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Fran Horowitz-Bonadies, whose salary is 3,660 times that of ordinary employees. This is followed by Gap, Mattel and Align Technology, which has salary gaps of more than 3,100 to 1.

Sarah Anderson (Sara, the lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies, “Excessive Excess 2019: Making corporate Pay for Big Pay gap” by Sarah Anderson (Executive Excess 2019: Making corporate Pay for Big Pay gap) Anderson) said that this is indeed a systemic problem. Anderson has been the lead author of these reports for the past 26 years and is responsible for the global economy projects of the above research institutes. Anderson said policymakers have finally taken action on this issue.

Beginning in 2018, US-listed companies were required to disclose the gap between their CEO’s annual income and ordinary employee income in the proxy statement. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also required disclosure of this gap. In 2016, policymakers in Portland, Oregon, passed a bill to tax companies whose CEO income is at least 100 times the median income of employees. “It’s exciting to see this progress at the state and local levels,” Anderson said. This tax applies to companies doing business in Portland and penalizes the size of the CEO and employee pay gap. For example, if a company’s CEO has 250 times the income of a regular employee, they must pay a 25% tax.

The overall income gap in the United States has been expanding over the past few decades. From 1978 to 2017, the income of the richest 0.1% of the population in the United States increased by about 340%, but compared with the income of CEOs, this is still negligible.

Anderson was surprised by the diversity of the 50 US companies with the largest pay gap. Although low-paying retailers such as Wal-Mart are not as famous as they are, many large technology companies and even auto parts companies have entered the list. Anderson said that this shows the breadth of the problem. We can’t just think that only Wal-Mart and McDonald’s do.

Wal-Mart’s wage gap is 1076:1, ranking 46th on the list. McDonald’s ranked 16th with a gap of 2,124:1. In addition, employees of 50 US companies need at least 1,000 years to earn the revenue their CEOs earned in 2018.