Fast Food CEOs Make The Most Relative To Their Average Employees, Study Shows, More Than In Retail, Media Or Construction

Shantel Walker has been working on and off for Papa John’s pizza since she was in high school. The 32-year-old New York City resident says that over her 15 years at a Brooklyn outlet of the Louisville, Ky.-based pizza chain, she’s received only two raises that weren’t mandated by federal or state minimum wage hikes. Today she makes $8.50 an hour, 50 cents above the New York State minimum wage, but her employer doesn’t currently use her more than 24 hours a week.

At the top end of the Papa John’s pyramid, CEO John Schnatter, the 51-year-old founder of the pizza chain, received a 26-percent increase in his base salary, to $900,000, according to a recent regulatory filing. His total compensation package last year: $2.1 million.

That income disparity between high-level executives and average employees is more extreme in the fast-food industry than in other areas of the service economy, according to a report released Tuesday by Demos, a liberal economic policy think tank. The study suggests that creating instability among large numbers of employees by not paying them enough to cover the cost of living creates a climate that can be detrimental to shareholder interests.

Read the report: Fast Food Failure: How CEO-to-Worker Pay Disparity Undermines the Industry and the Overall Economy