Chief Executive Research
After a years-long battle waged by the Fed, inflation—at least of the headline kind—appears to have subsided, settling in somewhere between 2 percent and 3 percent. But while the emergency is over, the damage—to the economy, to companies, to wages—will still leave a mark. CEOs are not immune.
To provide a more accurate picture of CEO and senior executive compensation in the U.S., Chief Executive Group Research collects annual pay data from more than 1,500 private companies and segments it by company size, sector and ownership type. A new analysis of the numbers from our 2024-25 CEO & Senior Executive Compensation Report shows private company CEO pay has effectively stalled during the past few years.
From 2020 to 2024, average wages in the U.S. exploded 26 percent, narrowly outpacing a 21 percent growth in prices over that period, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Center for American Progress.
CEO pay, meanwhile, hasn’t grown nearly as fast, leaving median CEO comp underwater compared to inflation. Our data shows private company CEOs have experienced an 18 percent increase in their base salary from 2020 to 2024, including the wage recovery from the pandemic, when many CEOs chose to temporarily forgo their salaries to keep their companies afloat. If you adjust that for the average pace of price increases (21 percent, as previously noted), CEO base salary has actually decreased by 2.8 percent.
In 2024, the median base salary (excluding bonus, equity and benefits) among private U.S. company CEOs was $325,000 (for reference: the median S&P 500 CEO earned $1.2 million). The median performance bonus expected to be paid out to private company CEOs for 2024—if the company’s targets are hit—is $100,000 (versus $3 million for S&P 500 CEOs).
But that bonus number has remained unchanged for four years, according to our research.
For 2025, CEOs expect an average increase of 3.3 percent in their base salary, to $335,725. That rate of increase is higher than the current level of inflation but still slightly lower than the current wage growth rate of 3.8 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bonus data for 2025 isn’t yet available, of course, but our data shows private companies are planning to set modest targets again in 2025, with the median bonus award expected to remain unchanged for another year, at $100,000.
A caveat here, though: The performance bonuses of many private company CEOs may not materialize, or at least not fully. Thanks to economic headwinds, CEOs have not hit their full bonus goals since 2021, with a median realized bonus payout of $80,000 in 2023, for example—80 percent of the $100,000 target—or just $77,920 when adjusted for inflation.
For the purposes of benchmarking 2024, a good year for many businesses, we can assume CEOs will earn the full bonus target of $100,000. This brings the total median cash compensation of a private U.S. company CEO to $425,000 in 2024 (before adjusting for inflation).
Equity gains will make up some of the difference, to be sure, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Our analysis finds that the median private company CEO in the U.S. owns approximately 9 percent of their company’s equity, for a value of $1.5 million. But while S&P 500 CEOs earn half of their annual compensation from stock awards (a bump of approximately $7 million), most private company CEOs do not typically receive new equity grants—or even quantified equity gains—each year because most private companies do not value themselves annually. After the past few years, perhaps it’s time to talk to the board about that.
With data collected from thousands of U.S. companies, the CEO & Senior Executive Compensation Report for Private Companies showcases more than 500,000 data points—including values by industry, ownership type and company size. The report will help you to structure the right combination of salary, bonus, benefits, perks and equity incentives to attract top talent and retain the talent you have. The report provides information (both real dollar values and percentage of total compensation) on base salary, bonus and equity rewards, benefits and perquisites. Learn more >
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