CEOs of Richmond's top employers make bank

The CEOs at some of Richmond's largest employers are also some of the highest paid executives in the country.

Why it matters: Nationally, CEO pay increased to a record level in 2021, but the pay for workers hasn't kept pace.

• Chief executives earned 254 times more than the median worker, per an analysis from Equilar, which compiles an annual list of top CEO pay at the nation's largest 100 companies by revenue.

What's happening: Nine of Richmond's largest employers are among those top 100 companies.

• And an analysis by Axios using Equilar's CEO-to-average-worker-pay ratio shows those executives earn 263 times more than their median workers.

Of note: Some of Richmond's largest employers did not make the Equilar list, either because they didn't file their proxy statements in time or because their CEOs aren't among the top paid. That includes:

• Altria CEO William F. Gifford Jr., who made $12.3 million, or 74 times more than the company's average workers, for 2020 (2021 was not available), according to the latest SEC filing.
• Dominion Energy CEO Robert M. Blue, who made $8.2 million, or 74 times more than the average worker at the company, according to its 2021 SEC filing.
• And Richmond's largest employer, VCU, which has more than 21,000 employees between the university and the health system. President Michael Rao's total compensation package, including housing, is just over $1 million a year.
• Data was not available for the area's fourth largest employer, Bon Secours Richmond.