I didn’t get a chance to comment on the WaPo’s analysis of worker’s wages.
Wages are rising more than twice as fast for highly paid workers in
the Washington area as they are for low-paid workers, an analysis of
federal data by The Washington Post shows.That means the spoils
of the region’s economic expansion are going disproportionately to
workers who are already well-paid, widening a gap between rich and poor
in a place where it is already wider than in most of the country.
I see quite a few bloggers have commented on this, and quite well, that left me not much to add.
There is another article, highlighting just how much the top CEO’s raked in, that will really make you ill.
It was another banner year for the Washington area’s highest-paid executives.
The
median total compensation for the 100 highest-paid executives at local
public companies rose 21.2 percent in 2005, to $6.4 million from $5.2
million the year before. While the median salary for that group
increased 4 percent, bonuses climbed nearly 14 percent, the value of
the typical stock option grant went up by more than 25 percent, and
other forms of long-term compensation leapt by a third.
Compare that to the next group of executives.
Just as options buoyed compensation for the top group, a decline in the
awards dragged down results for others: The median total compensation
package for the next 600 executives in the study fell by 3.9 percent to
$642,543. Companies with executives in that group cited a variety of
reasons for a fall-off in options, including failure to meet financial
targets and concern about a new rule forcing companies to count the
cost of stock options as an expense. The median is the midpoint in the
sample.
I’m a bit confused. First, if these executives aren’t meeting financial targets, that should directly reflect on the CEO. At what point don’t they have responsibility for the work of their underlings? If the targets aren’t being met, the CEO shouldn’t be getting raises and benefit increases. Not to mention the whole cost of stocks being an expense thing. They cite the value of stocks for CEO’s, and the cost of stocks for the next group of execs. If the company can get around giving a higer value of stocks to CEO’s hy can’t they do that for the other execs? the whole excuse sounds fishy to me.
