Starbucks boss deserves 6666 times as much as his employees

Brian Niccol has only been a boss at Starbucks since September last year. The troubled coffee house giant, based in Seattle, recruited the top manager from the Chipotle fast food chain. Niccol’s most remarkable decisions have since been that the employees in the shops have to scribble names, smileys and small messages again in the future (instead of sticking to sticking), this should improve the customer experience. For this he had 200,000 new pens.

It remains to be seen whether the measure leads back to old size. In any case, his commitment has already paid off financially for Niccol itself: in 2024 alone, the top manager earned around $ 98 million. A lavish welcome bonus from Starbucks and an even more lush share package contributed significantly to this, which he can make about cash over the next few years.

With his remuneration of almost 100 million, the new Starbucks boss is the outstanding example of the enormous salary scissors between CEOs and simple employees that the US union association AFL-CIO denounces. Because the typical Starbucks employee earns less than $ 15,000 a year according to the evaluation. The Niccol content is therefore a whopping 6666 times as high as that of his simple employees.

This is still enormous even if you take into account that, in contrast to the average employee used for comparison, Niccol should not do his work part -time. “The average Starbucks employee should have started at Starbucks in 4643 BC (in the Stone Age!) In order to earn what the CEO von Starbucks earned in 2024 alone,” says the report of the most members of the members.

On average, the CEOs of the 500 largest listed US companies (S&P 500) earned $ 18.9 million last year, according to the report. That was seven percent more than in the previous year, but the content of the typical employee only rose by three percent. The bosses earned an average of 285 times as much as their typical workers, in the previous year it had been 268 times as much.

According to the salary report, the gap at Abercrombie, whose boss Fran Horowitz deserves 6731 times as much as his average textile worker, is even greater than with Starbucks. Abercrombie is not represented in the S&P 500. If you only look at the S&P 500 companies, the Starbucks boss in the salary gaps ranking follow the bosses of the automotive supplier Aptiv, the semiconductor manufacturer on Semiconductor and Coca-Cola. They earn around 2000 times as much as their simple employees.

It is unlikely that the salary scissors close. On the contrary: the tax cuts recently enforced by US President Donald Trump will dramatically enlarge the gap between poor and rich experts. The trade union association calculates that the average CEO saves around $ 490,000 taxes a year through the reform, but the typical US worker only $ 765.