How Long It Takes the Largest Companies in America to Make One Employee's Average Annual Salary
Found on imgur https://imgur.io/gallery/gqItf8e
Found on imgur https://imgur.io/gallery/gqItf8e
To save people from having to squint at the small text; top chart is measured in seconds, bottom chart is measured in days.
This infographic has a very big and obvious flaw: wages are not the only cost of a company.
If a company covers its wages costs in 1 day it doesn't mean that it's pocketing the remaining 363.
Instead of revenue, they should use wages+profit. This way we can see which companies take what part of the generated value for themselves.
That "flaw" you pointed out is the point of the infographic. It is literally just to visualize the proportion of revenue paid to employees. No one is saying that the rest of the revenue is straight up profit, I cannot even imagine how you came to that conclusion.
The revenue vs profit aspect is also difficult to measure. An example as to why is Amazon claimed it made no profit for years, because it reinvested all of the revenue it gained in addition to revenue that paid for operating costs. Are you going to believe Amazon's claim? Most people would argue they did profit, and that reinvestment is still profiting, but that's not how things are often measured.
Well, one could argue that since this community is called "work reform", the point of this infographic is to make workers aware of how much more companies would pay them. This infographic does not accomplish that.
If your company buys a chair for 1000€ and you sell it for 1001€, the company got a revenue of 1001€. You cannot ask more than 1€ to be paid to you for it though, since the company would be losing money. That's what is called a profit margin.
This infographic shows companies from a wide range of sectors, and a wide range of profit margins as if they were comparable. You cannot compare the wage/revenue ratio of a supermarket to a tech company, since they operate at different profit margins.
You can compare wage/(profit+wage) ratio though, as it measures which part of the pie goes to the workers and which to the company, and that is universal.
It is true that it's hard to measure "profit", but that fact doesn't make this infographic any better.
And we can pretty much double the numbers by what it actually costs to employ someone vs. what they are paid.
Want nice things like healthcare and other benefits, worker's comp, unemployment insurance and the like?
Worked at a small payroll firm for 5-years. I was the IT manager, so not like I'm an expert, but I had a lot of questions and worked closely with payroll and accounting. Very eye opening.
If you get paid $15/hr., you probably cost the company $26-29/hr. And we had small clients like churches, restaurants, convenience stores, thrift shops, places paying shit wages and shit benefits. I make ~$80K with stunning benefits, so I figure my company's actual cost to keep my ass in the seat is maybe $200K?
Well, I think I'd rather see total employee compensation, rather than strictly wages.
I think mixing profit in would muddy the waters of what it's showing, but salary+healthcare+other benefits would show it's intent a little better.
Revenue? Profit? EBITDA? Without a definition for what "make" means, this is useless, and verges on propaganda.
Says right at the top of the chart. The 3 data points are 2022 revenue, revenue per second, and average salary.
My fault for not being able to read teeny tiny gray text on a white background, I guess.
Anyway, comparing revenue to worker compensation isn't really very useful. Payroll comes out of that revenue, as does every other cost of doing business. Compare payroll to profit, or to executive compensation, if you want to make a point. Yeah, worker compensation sucks, but just comparing it to "the biggest number we could find" doesn't mean anything.
That's not what they said. They were commenting that comparing payroll to revenue is like comparing apples and oranges. If you make an apples to apples comparison, like between payroll and profits, you can make a more defensible argument that income inequality is a problem which needs to be fixed.
Misrepresenting the issue causes people on the side of labor to be less effective in their efforts, because they're operating with flawed data, and makes it so that people on the side of capital can more easily disregard the concerns of labor.
There are solid and useful comparisons to be made, as I previously mentioned. Worker salary vs. corporate revenue isn't one of them.
It's revenue not profit but anyway...
Fun fact from this is The Home Depot receives revenue of an average worker's salary in roughly 3 bars of "The Home Depot Song"
I don't think it says profit anywhere? It says 2022 revenue in the legend for the companies, and the annual personal salary is revenue too because it needs to be spent on living expenses.
Conflating "to make money" with "revenue" instead of profit is the iffy part for me... I apologize for not being clear about that.
At the risk of entering pedant territory, the idea of "making" the money is by doing something that would cause a person to pay more than before. If acquiring the "before" and the act of adding value incur costs, then to me, the "money made" is the revenue less those costs.
That's fine? Payroll is an expense, it does come out of revenue. Profit is what's left over after they pay everyone else.
Please see my reply to the other commenter, my issue is with "making money" being conflated with revenue.
The platonic ideal corporation would be an entity that has no employees, extracts rent from everything, has no expenses, produces no products, and pays no taxes.
This platonic ideal is a parasitic organization that serves no purpose, but we've structured our entire economy around the endless pursuit of it in all sectors.
Look at all those healthcare companies. Fifty years ago, such a list might have a Big Pharma company, but no patient care portals at all (hospitals, pharmacies, etc). Now they dominate the whole list.
And it's also worth noting that several of these are also huge players in the opioid crisis, including the four who settled to avoid state lawsuits that would have gutted them (looking at you Cencora, McKesson, Johnson&Johnson, and Cardinal Health).
Hey, maybe you would know… why are pharmacies/pharmacists being sued for the opioid crisis? I could understand suing pharmacies back in the day when pharmacists were able to dispense meds without a Dr’s Rx, but when Congress stripped pharmacists of basically all power except strictly following a written script in the early 80s as part of the war on drugs, it seems like modern pharmacies have two options with an opioid Rx. Do their jobs and fill it, or do their jobs and don’t fill it. And the filling it job seems like the more responsible choice. I am a lawyer and I really don’t understand the theory of recovery and I enjoy talking about it more than reading up on it. Is it just that the pharmacies have deep pockets?
The first source listed is the infographic's creator's website... Only a little sus. 😅🤷🏼♂️
So let me get this straight, is the infographic claiming that Walmart's revenue is 8 times more than Microsoft?
Edit: Nevermind, I thought it meant the average employee salary in the US. It's using the average salary per company.
Original source (yes, it has more pixels):
https://llcattorney.com/business-info/us-companies-salaries-vs-revenue
would be more interesting to see how much more could those companies pay their employees if their profit was evenly distributed among them
Would need to make sure to exclude costs like executive "compensation", stock buy backs, or any other methods used to artificially decrease profits to avoid taxes.
Stock buybacks don't reduce profit for the company. They are not accounted as an expense that offsets income. Investors pay capital gains tax instead of income tax that they would pay on an equivalent dividend, which is probably what you are thinking of.
Net revenue, gross profit, operating income, EBITDA, and (net) profit are some well understood measures that take various things into account. E.g. net revenue subtracts the cost of inventory, but it doesn't subtract wages, so it's probably a good starting point for a discussion on redistributing earnings among workers.
Since most or even all of them are publicly traded companies it isn't that difficult to find out.
Walmart had a net income of 14 billion, they have roughly 2.1 million employees, that leaves each employee with an additional 6.6k for this year or roughly an additional 550 a month.
Doesn't sound a lot but that can be done without impacting any other business practices. And for some of the employees overseas that might be doubling their salaries.
Considering a large portion of Walmart workers receive food stamps and other benefits due to low income, it would be a huge boost for those folks and lessen demand for assistance on local govts…but nah let’s keep all the money to pay for our drunk driving murder nights.
drunk driving murder nights.
Because many are not aware, one of Sam Walton's children is a notorious drunk that likes to drive and may have killed a few people (I am unclear how many.)
It really depends on how much it costs them to do business. Payroll is only a part of the cost to do business. Companies like Walmart have massive real estate holdings which likely take a significant chunk of their revenue to pay off.
Are you referring to stores and warehouses or do you mean they dabble in the real estate market?
Ah, so these “massive real estate holdings” cost virtually nothing to them in construction costs, and are designed to require as little maintenance as humanly possible. In addition, their tax obligations on these real estate holdings are virtually nonexistent due to the severely discounted tax obligation they have for “bringing jobs to the area” (even though those jobs are shit). City and county governments fall all over themselves to give them as little tax obligation as possible.
Their “real estate holdings” are as much a drop in the bucket as employee pay.
It was a single example. But they also have to heat, cool, and power their enormous store areas, warehouses, frozen warehouses. There are absolutely lots of costs that big companies must cover besides just payroll.
Here you go, the original sauce: https://llcattorney.com/business-info/us-companies-salaries-vs-revenue
I'm having a hard time with the realities of this. How much time should a corporation take to earn the salary of the average employee? What percent of a company's yearly profits would be appropriate to be spent on salaries? Many of the companies are exceeding 1/12. Is that enough? If not, what is?
I know I'll probably be on the wrong side of things (again), but I didn't find this graphic stirring. Is there a number out there that people find acceptable?
Profits aren't spent on salaries. Salaries one of the things deducted from revenue to determine profits.
What percent of a company’s yearly profits would be appropriate to be spent on salaries?
The OP they responded to did.
Even if we compare it to profits the time frame just switch to minutes. Walmart made a net profit after taxes of 14 billion. That translates to 26k per minute.
Shouldn't the discussion revolve solely around SPENDABLE income? Am I misunderstanding something? I'm sure I am.
No, salaries are based a pre-tax basis. In other words you’re told you’ll make $120,000 per year, that amount is before taxes.
But companies also pay taxes before even paying you. So they'll pay 140k to pay you 120k which you'll earn 100k (along those lines)
They pay tax after paying you.
Payroll is an expense that gets deducted from revenue before calculating taxes.
They pay employer contributions/insurance/deductions but you pay the tax on it. It's to avoid double taxing that money (corp pays tax and you pay tax).
Edit for replies: yes, they pay payroll tax but that is based on payroll, and is a percentage of payroll. The other replies were referring to bottom line tax and revenue/profit. Maybe I should have been clearer but I was trying to keep it easy and not muddy the waters.
I thing comparison to the employee salary makes no sense whatsoever. Different businesses have different expenditure structures depending on various things, like the type of business their are doing. In some companies, salaries might be dominating expense, in some others barely noticeable. Says nothing about how "fair" the business is.
And two companies with the same proportional structure, but of different number of employees, will have different numbers in this representation.
Ooooooh, companies. I initially misread it as CEOs, and the numbers did not seem right. Though that would be a more interesting metric.
I came here to tear this apart as being liberal propaganda, but was pleasantly surprised that others already took care of it. I am liberal, but not when it comes to economics. You can’t go throwing around numbers when you don’t understand how the economy operates and businesses function in general.
Being a social liberal and a fiscal conservative involves specific stances on two different aspects of governance. Social liberalism emphasizes individual rights, equality, and social justice, often advocating for policies like marriage equality, abortion rights, and anti-discrimination laws. It’s about how society should be organized and how individuals should be treated within it.
Fiscal conservatism, on the other hand, focuses on economic policy. It advocates for reduced government spending, lower taxes, and minimal government debt. This approach is about how the government manages its finances, aiming for efficiency and reduced intervention in the economy.
Libertarianism, while it can share some aspects of both social liberalism and fiscal conservatism, is a broader political philosophy. It emphasizes individual liberty as its core principle, advocating for minimal government intervention in both personal lives and the economy. This includes a strong emphasis on free markets, personal freedom, and limited government across all aspects of life.
So, while there are overlaps, especially in terms of economic policy with fiscal conservatism, libertarianism as a philosophy extends beyond just economic or social issues. It’s a comprehensive worldview about the role of government and individual freedom, whereas being a social liberal and a fiscal conservative usually refers to specific policy preferences within the existing political system.
I believe in appropriate regulation of the free market to prevent monopolies and improper collusion, however it is not fair to criticize companies in a vacuum for how quickly they cover employee overhead costs, because that is just one line item on their budget. The point being made by the author is that the company may have more money to give, but that is shortsighted framing of the issue to blame companies without understanding the economics of their business.
