Apple increased workers’ pay by 18% because last year most S&P companies rose median pay due to the booming economy and the tight job market.
Wall Street Journal analyzed the pay level at S&P 500 companies which revealed that Apple’s pay bump was “significantly” higher than most other companies in the index. However, the workers’ average pay at the $3 trillion company was below its competitors, Alphabet and Meta which have the highest average pay.
Even with an 18% increase, Apple’s average pay is lower than Alphabet and Meta
Using the median to calculate the average pay from low to high ranking workers, the analysis found that median pay at the Cupertino tech giant was $68,254 in 2021 which was an 18% increase from 2020.
But, the average pay at Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Meta (Facebook’s parent company) had the highest-paid median at almost $300,000. Almost 150 other companies had higher average pay than Apple with a median salary over $100,000.
The tech giant has 154,00 employees and the discrepancy between the salaries of corporate and retail workers at Apple is greater. 9to5 Mac writes:
One of the other interesting stats is the CEO pay ratio. This is calculated by dividing the CEO’s annual compensation by the median employee’s pay, and is used as a general guide to the fairness of a company’s pay structure. Apple’s ratio is a particularly poor one, at 1,447 – but that’s not surprising given the performance bonuses earned by Cook against a large retail workforce.
Therefore, several retail stores in the United States which are in favor of unionization because they will be able to negotiate higher pay and better benefits for themselves. So far the tech giant has employed different tactics to discourage workers from voting for unionization; recently, it has been communicating the consequences of a union like adverse impact on their career growth, deterioration of their relations with the company, and this month, it raised workers hourly pay to $22 per hour.
