Labor Day 2024: The 3 S&P 500 companies with the highest and lowest median pay

September 1, 2024

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5 min read

This is another in a series of articles that will incorporate data from YourStake, a technology platform designed to help financial advisors and investors align their portfolios with personal values, focusing on ESG criteria.

With Labor Day upon us, let’s look at the companies in the S&P 500 with the highest and lowest median worker pay. ESG investors have long looked to data analytics to decipher which companies are good corporate actors and which are not, and median pay is an easy way to judge if companies are treating their workers fairly.

While the inflationary economy resulting from the reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt Americans at the grocery store, median pay, when adjusted for inflation, is at its highest point since at least 1979, according to research from Statistica. But that’s not to say there are no major issues regarding fair employee compensation.

In the United States, the fast food and retail industries typically get the most attention for low worker pay, but when looking at the globalized companies included in the S&P 500, another sector jumps out. The highest and lowest paying companies both feature the technology sector, though in very different ways.

3 companies with the highest median pay

1. Alexandria Real Estate Equities

Headquarters: Pasadena, Calif. (pictured above)

Employees: 568

Market Cap: $20.9 billion

Median Pay: $295,136

Alexandria Real Estate Equities ARE is a real estate investment trust with an asset base of 74 million square feet of properties, including 42 million square feet of rentable operating properties and 24 million square feet of future development projects. The REIT compensates its employees a median pay of $295,136.

The trust has declined 5.7% year to date and is currently trading at $119 a share.

2. Alphabet

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Employees: 179,582

Market Cap: $2.0 trillion

Median Pay: $273,493

One look at the two other top companies in the S&P 500 based on median pay, and you’ll notice something very different about Alphabet GOOG . Its sheer size.

With 179,582 employees at a median pay of $295,136, the company spent about $223 billion last year in operating expenses, a drop in the bucket compared to its $328 billion in revenue.

Alphabet towers over some of its competitors regarding median pay. While Meta Platforms has a median pay just a few thousand dollars lower than Alphabet’s, there are plenty of outliers, such as Apple paying a median of $100,000 per year and Amazon at less than $40,000. The industry median pay is about $117,000. Alphabet is trading at $165.11, up about 18% year to date.

3. Consolidated Edison

Headquarters: New York, N.Y.

Employees: 14,592

Market Cap: $35.2 billion

Median Pay: $259,289

Better known as ConEd ED , the company offers utility services to customers in New York City and surrounding areas. Operating in the regulated electric, gas and steam delivery sphere, ConEd largely operates in the New York metropolitan area. With a median pay of $259,289 it finds itself third on the list of top 3 companies in the S&P 500 when judged by median pay.

3 companies with the lowest median pay

1. Aptiv

Headquarters: Dublin, Ireland

Employees: 154,000

Market Cap: $16.8 billion

Median Pay: $5,906

A worldwide manufacturer of vehicle components based in Dublin, Ireland, Aptiv APTV reportedly pays its workers just $5,906 per year. The company, which has 154,000 employees in more than 40 countries, has come under fire in recent years for its pay disparity.

In 2020, the company came under public scrutiny for its CEO-to-worker pay ratio after Aptiv doubled the compensation CEO Kevin Clark received compared to the year prior.

Aptiv is down 29% year to date and has lost more than 50% of its value since peaking at $177.53 a share in late 2021 before dropping to its current trading price of $71.53.

2. Western Digital

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Employees: 51,000

Market Cap: $22.5 billion

Median Pay: $7,719

Even as a well-known technology company known for manufacturing hard drives and solid-state drives, Western Digital misses the mark in terms of compensating employees. Nearly half of its employees are between the ages of 20 and 30 years old and the company has relied heavily on manufacturing in Thailand and Malaysia. Western Digital WDC is up 25% year to date and is trading at $65.50 a share, though it’s only up 19% over a 5-year period.

3. Jabil

Heaquarters: St. Petersburg, Fla.

Employees: 236,000

Market Cap: $12.4 billion

Median Pay: $7,753

A report from the Catalyst in St. Petersburg showed Jabil’s workforce was 93% comprised of employees outside of the United States, and the company said its median pay of $7,753 per year is competitive with local market practices. According to the company’s profile, Jabil provides manufacturing services and solutions worldwide in two segments: electronics manufacturing and diversified manufacturing services. Jabil JBL is down 14.2% year to date and is trading at 109.28 a share.

What we’ve learned

While working in retail in the United States is often cited as one of the lowest-paying jobs in America — and that’s true — the companies paying the lowest wages in the S&P 500 are often overseas operations relying on cheap labor to produce goods. The data was provided by the American Federation of Trade Unions and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which updates a list of the lowest median wage companies each year. Further information, including data on CEO-to-worker pay ratios, and be found on their website.

YourStake embraces data transparency on its company screeners to combat “greenwashing” and uses more than 150 databases to provide accurate information to impact investors.