Most Americans say CEO pay gaps matter but few think companies are curbing them
A new Bentley University and Gallup survey finds broad public concern about the gap between CEO and worker pay, while only a small share of Americans believe companies are handling it well.
Most Americans believe companies should avoid wide pay gaps between chief executives and their employees, yet only a small share think businesses are doing a good job of narrowing them. That is the central finding of a new confidence survey from Bentley University and Gallup, which found that 84 percent of Americans consider it important for companies to avoid a major pay gap between CEOs and workers. Just 15 percent believe companies are succeeding at reining those gaps in.
The survey, released this month, also found that 97 percent of Americans say it is important for businesses to make money in an ethical way. Only 32 percent say companies are accomplishing that goal. The gap between what the public expects and what it sees suggests that concerns about fairness in corporate pay are widespread and not confined to a single political or demographic group.
The findings arrive as executive compensation continues to climb. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay at the 350 largest U.S. firms rose 14 percent in 2025, excluding the extraordinary compensation package granted to Elon Musk at Tesla. CEOs at these firms earned 325 times as much as the average employee. The institute notes that as executive pay is increasingly tied to stock prices and company valuations, worker wages have grown more slowly over the last decade.
The survey also measured public trust in institutions. Americans rated businesses more highly than the federal government when it comes to making decisions and having a positive impact. Last year, 51 percent of U.S. adults said the federal government was effective at improving people's lives. This year that figure fell eight percentage points, to 43 percent. The study found a 49-point gap between Americans who believe the federal government has great potential to make a difference and those who think it is effective at doing so.
Even as businesses earned higher marks than Washington for productive decision-making, respondents still expect companies to meet ethical standards. The results suggest that the public's tolerance for large executive pay disparities is limited, and that companies face a credibility challenge in showing they are treating compensation fairly. Taken together, the data point to a durable tension: Americans want businesses to perform well, but they are skeptical that the profits and rewards of that performance are being shared in a way that reflects basic fairness.
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