Pro athletes, A-list actors and musical artists are usually celebrated for the hefty paycheques they take home.
So why not business “superstars”?
“This phenomenon of top talent getting incredible rates of compensation is not exclusive to the business world,” says Jason Clemens, executive vice-president of the Fraser Institute and co-author of CEO to Worker Pay: A Broader Examination.
The report posits that technology is allowing top performers — be it in business or entertainment — to reach new audiences at relatively little additional cost. This subsequently allows them to command higher pay.
Meanwhile, the right-leaning Fraser Institute is also taking aim at a January 2 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which highlights growing income inequality between executives and workers.
The left-leaning CCPA points out that average compensation for Canada’s top 100 CEOs grew 8% year-over-year to $10.4 million in 2016.
The average pay for Canadian workers, meanwhile, grew 0.5% to $49,738 during the same one-year period.
Clemens’ report concluded that if the CCPA extended its analysis to include all CEOs of the top 1,000 publicly traded companies in Canada — not just the top 100 — then the gap between executives and workers would look much smaller.
Using data from 2015, the Fraser Institute estimated average pay — which includes base salaries, bonuses and stock options — would amount to $2.1 million for CEOs.
In a different report from the one released this month, the CCPA estimated that average compensation came to $9.6 million for the country’s top 100 CEOs in 2015.
Citing data from Forbes Magazine, the Fraser Institute’s study notes paydays for entertainers like musician Taylor Swift (US$179 million), soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo (US$88 million) and actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson (US$64.5 million) stack up well compared with Canada’s top 100 CEOs.
But Clemens said both entertainers and executives are also earning more partly because of the impacts of globalization.
“One of the drivers of that increased compensation is because the markets that they access have become much larger,” he said.
“If you just go down the list of the top Canadian companies, think of how many of those companies are no longer just exclusively Canadian companies.”
