Canada’s 100 highest-paid chief executive officers — who are overwhelmingly male — were paid an average of $14.9 million in 2022, 246-times more than the average employee wage and setting a new record, according to a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
It found in 2022, Canadian employees received an average pay raise of $1,800, or three per cent. However, as average consumer prices went up by 6.8 per cent, it was equivalent to a pay cut of almost four per cent.
Read: Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs make 191-times the average worker wage: report
The top 100 CEOs, on the other hand, saw an average pay raise of $623,000, or 4.4 per cent. Even the pay of the last CEO to make the top 100 list reached an all-time high, earning $6.7 million, slightly higher than last year.
As corporate profit margins increased alongside inflation in 2021 and 2022, CEO bonuses also hit an all-time high, said the report, noting performance pay was cited as the main driver for record CEO pay over the past two years. CEOs’ salaries remained relatively constant at around $1.2 million.
The report also found the average male CEO made $18.5 million and the average female CEO made $11.7 million, resulting in the average female CEO earning 63 cents for every dollar earned by a male CEO.
Read: Women CEOs’ compensation up 26% in 2021, but ranks remain small