Thanks to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, shareholders gained access to new information this year.
The big picture: Companies must now disclose the ratio of pay between the CEO and the company’s median employee. Not surprisingly, five of the top 10 worst CEOs overall are present in the list's top 10 companies with the highest ratio of CEO to median employee pay.
- Note: Mattel, whose CEO makes 4,987 times more than its median employee, said 78% of its employees work abroad — and mostly in manufacturing plants, where wages are far lower than in the U.S.
What they're saying: "If you look at the pay of top CEOs relative to workers, that ratio in the 1950s was 20 to 1, was about 30 to 1 by the late '70s, and by the mid-1990s it was 120 to 1," Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary for President Bill Clinton, said during Thursday's call with reporters. "When I was working in the White House that was a cause of real concern. That ratio seemed appalling to most people. Now it’s 300 to 1."
Go deeper: The most overpaid CEOs