Ford CEO Jim Farley’s total compensation grew 26% last year, despite falling short of his potential bonus target, according to the automaker’s annual proxy statement filed with U.S. regulators.
Farley’s 2023 compensation package came out to $26.47 million, up from $20.99 million in 2022. The majority of his compensation came from stock awards, worth roughly $20.3 million, while Farley’s base salary remained unchanged at $1.7 million. His nonequity incentives fell to $2.75 million from $3.67 million, because he hit 71% of his annual bonus plan award target.
Ford also paid $611,174 for Farley’s personal air travel and $732,943 for executive chairman Bill Ford’s air travel. The company also paid $1.2 million for Bill Ford’s security. The chairman’s total compensation hit $20.6 million, up from $17.3 million in 2022.
United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain, who heavily criticized executive pay during last year’s autoworker strikes, condemned Farley’s compensation package.
“Just a few weeks ago Farley was crying to the press about how the UAW’s record contracts were forcing the company to rethink where they build their vehicles, but now they have no problem finding the money to give him a 26% pay raise to $26.5 million a year,” Fain said in a statement.
The median compensation for all Ford employees — barring Farley himself — was $84,829, according to the company. That’s an increase from $74,691 in 2022.
However, the disparity between Farley’s pay and the median worker’s has only grown. Farley made 312 times as much as the median worker did in 2023, up from 281 times as much in 2022. The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 271-to-1 for S&P 500 companies in 2022, according to the AFL-CIO.
“Let’s be clear: This is corporate greed, plain and simple,” Fain added. “All across the country we are seeing greedy companies jack up prices to gouge the working class while company executives and wealthy shareholders continue to lavish themselves with astronomical returns.”
Farley was by no means the only public company CEO whose pay went up in 2023. Median pay for S&P 500 company executives reached $15.6 million in 2023, up from $14.1 million in 2022, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Cisco Systems CEO Charles Robbin saw his paycheck double to $65.5 million, while Adobe nearly doubled CEO Shantanu Narayen’s compensation to $87.2 million. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan received a $161 million stock award that could reach over a billion dollars based on the company’s stock performance.
Steve Huffman, the co-founder and CEO of newly-public Reddit, received a larger pay package than the chief executives of Pinterest, Snapchat, and Meta combined in 2023. Huffman was paid $193 million last year, according to a regulatory filing.