How the Pay Gap Between Employees and CEOs Impacts Workers, According to Experts

Money can, in fact, buy happiness: A much publicized 2010 study found that employees needed to earn $75,000 per year to feel fulfilled, and that each additional dollar above that wouldn’t make a difference. But according to more recent research from Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, there is no such level.

After assessing 1.7 million data points about workers’ overall life satisfaction from more than 33,000 employed adults, Killingsworth “found that all forms of well-being continued to rise with income. I don’t see any sort of kink in the curve, an inflection point where money stops mattering. Instead, it keeps increasing.” Unfortunately, wages haven’t been increasing as significantly as workers might hope. In July 2013, American workers earned $20.14 per hour, on average. In July 2023, workers earned just $28.96 per hour, on average.

According to MyLogIQ data from 2022, the median Target employee earns $25,993 and the company has a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 680 to one.