Hillary Clinton gets one Pinocchio on CEO pay

From the Washington Post. Excerpts:

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are more than 246,000 chief executives in the United States, with a median annual wage of $173,320. Looking just at chief executives of “management of companies and enterprises” yields an annual median wage of just over $216,000. These figures do not include benefits, but on an hourly basis it’s about five or six times more than the pay of a typical worker before benefits.

Data published by the Statistic Brain Web site, using information from Forbes and other organizations, also shows that more than 50 percent of chief executives have an annual salary of less than $250,000 and nearly 80 percent make less than $500,000. Just 2 percent have annual salaries that top $3 million. (These figures do not appear to include stock options.)

Now, of course, the earnings by executives at the biggest firms certainly influence pay trends at smaller companies, as well as pay for university presidents, nonprofit executives and so forth. But the story is much more complicated once you get past the companies with the biggest revenue."

"Finally, we should note that a disparity in pay between very top in a field and other workers is not necessarily unusual. For instance, the average salary for the top 100 Major League Baseball players is $16.4 million, compared to $4 million for the average for all MLB players and about $40,000 for professional minor league baseball players who earn a spot on a 40-man roster. Most minor-league players earn between $3,000 and $7,000 in a season, according to a lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball that said minor-leaguers earned less than fast-food workers on the minimum wage.

The Pinocchio Test

Clinton appeared to be speaking extemporaneously, though a video of the event indicates she was also looking at notes. But she should have been clearer that she was discussing the pay ratio of top corporate chief executives, not all CEOs."