Starbucks CEO Niccol Makes 6,666 Times Company’s Workers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 24, 9:15AM EDT

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Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) CEO Brian Niccol was the highest-paid chief executive in the United States last year.
A recent analysis reveals that he made 6,666 times the median pay of the company’s workers.

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Starbucks CEO Niccol Makes 6,666 Times Company’s Workers — © 2024 Getty Images / Getty Images News via Getty Images

A new study from the AFL-CIO titled the “Annual Executive Paywatch Report” examines CEO pay by category, industry, and state. Among its conclusions is that the highest-paid chief executive in the United States last year was Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX | SBUX Price Prediction) CEO Brian Niccol. His compensation was 6,666 times the median pay of the company’s workers. The data is filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission each year.

According to the report, “The median Starbucks worker would have had to start working for Starbucks in 4643 BC (during the Stone Age!) just to earn what Starbucks’ CEO earned in 2024 alone.”

The report was broken down by industry (e.g., mining, retail, healthcare, and real estate), by the components of pay packages (base pay, bonuses, stock options, and benefits), and by state. In 2024, the average CEO compensation among S&P 500 companies increased by 7% from 2023 to $18.9 million. “The median employee would have had to start working in 1740 to earn what the average CEO received in 2024.”

At the far end of the list, eight companies had CEOs who made only 1.1 times the median pay of their workers. These companies were Airbnb, American Coastal Insurance, Affirm Holdings, Amplitude, Aurora Innovation, Doximity, Forrester Research, and Franklin Street Properties.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a group of 63 national and international labor unions. It represents approximately 15 million workers, and it was founded in 1955.

Niccol has had a rough start at Starbucks, which he joined in September of 2024. His pay package was criticized because, among other things, it included a private airplane to fly him from his home in Newport Beach, California, to Starbucks headquarters in Seattle. Recently, he told some Starbucks executives that they would need to move to Seattle and Toronto. According to Benefits Canada, “Niccol said affected workers who choose not to relocate will be eligible for a one-time voluntary exit program with a cash payment.”

So far this year, Starbucks stock is up 5%, compared to an increase of 8% for the S&P 500.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.