The CEO of Kroger, Walmart, Target, or any other grocery store chain probably never has to think about the price of eggs, milk, or even caviar.
In fact, even when you look at the lowest-paid big grocery chain CEO, Publix’s Kevin Murphy, he’s probably not spending a lot of time at the butcher counter deciding whether to buy ground beef instead of steak. “CEOs of major U.S. companies were paid 21 times as much as the typical worker in 1965, using the realized measure of CEO compensation, which captures what CEOs took home in pay after any stock-based compensation were sold,” according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
The numbers have climbed significantly in recent years. “This ratio grew to 31-to-1 in 1978 and 60-to-1 by 1989. It surged in the 1990s, hitting 380-to-1 in 2000, at the end of the 1990s recovery and at the height of the stock market bubble,” the EPI showed. Grocery chain CEOs have certainly benefited from rising salaries, which stands out at a time when many Americans have struggled with inflation.
Grocery prices have climbed 32% since 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pay range is very significant, however, as the top-paid CEO made more than $29 million in 2025, while the tenth-highest-paid grocery chain CEO “only” took home $4 million for the year.