Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Yep, it’s good to be a CEO—again

Clearly, 2016 was a good year for CEOs. They’re on track to set a post-recession record for capturing their portion of the surplus.

According to a new Wall Street Journal analysis, median pay for the chief executives of 104 of the biggest American companies rose 6.8 percent for fiscal 2016—to $11.5 million. At the very top was Thomas Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, who took home $98.5 million last year. (Here’s a link to the compensation of the other CEOs in the study.)

By way of comparison (using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), average wages for production and nonsupervisory workers rose 2.5 percent, to $21.86. And their annual pay rose by the same percentage, to $36,725.

If you’re keeping track, that means the ratio of average CEO to average worker pay in 2016 was 299.5!

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Share this!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

No, Uber is not a path to personal freedom and financial independence.

Far from it.

According to internal Uber calculations, provided to BuzzFeed News, based on data spanning more than a million rides and covering thousands of drivers in three major U.S. markets—Denver, Detroit, and Houston—drivers in each of the three markets overall earned less than an average of $13.25 an hour after expenses.

Uber says it doesn’t know how much drivers on its platform actually earn per hour, after expenses. Still, Uber’s internal pricing models, found in the spreadsheets provided to BuzzFeed News, do generate rough estimates of driver net pay. But in internal communications seen by BuzzFeed News, Uber explicitly discourages employees from comparing these estimates to the minimum wage.

A BuzzFeed News review of the rough internal net pay estimates contained in the leaked documents determined that the models Uber used are highly abstracted and oversimplify certain key calculations. Rather than relying on Uber’s figures, BuzzFeed News conducted an independent analysis of the raw trip data and driver data. Uber subsequently recalculated BuzzFeed’s estimates using a broader and more detailed set of internal data — which it declined to share directly with BuzzFeed News. The company did, however, conduct this recalculation according to BuzzFeed News’ methodology — which it said was “solid” — and did so in the presence of a BuzzFeed News editor and reporter.

Based on these calculations, it’s possible to estimate that Uber drivers in late 2015 earned approximately $13.17 per hour after expenses in the Denver market (which includes all of Colorado), $10.75 per hour after expenses in the Houston area, and $8.77 per hour after expenses in the Detroit market, less than any earnings figure previously released by the company.

What this means is that Uber drivers (at least in Denver, Houston, and Detroit) earn about the same as or less than the average for “taxi drivers and chauffeurs,” which in May 2015 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) was $13 an hour.

And just so we understand how little drivers make—inside and outside the so-called sharing economy—the average hourly pay for production and nonsupervisory workers in May of last year was $20.99.

Or just compare that to the net worth of Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber Technologies: $6.2 billion.

Clearly, the only sharing going on in Uber is from the bottom up.

Chart of the day

The United States’ top 500 chief executive officers managed to capture 335 times the average worker’s wage last year, taking home $12.4 million on average, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO. That average CEO pay was a whopping 819 times the wage of a worker earning the federal minimum wage.

Here’s the list of the top 25 CEOs by pay—from Joe Kiani of Massimo Corp (at more than $199 million) to Jeff Immelt of GE (at just under $33 million):

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention