Elon Musk (일론 머스크), Tesla's chief executive, was found to have received compensation in 2025 worth 2,522,203 times that of the average Tesla employee.

On Aug. 13 local time, electric vehicle outlet Electrek cited the AFL-CIO's annual Executive Paywatch report as saying Musk recorded the highest pay among CEOs of S&P 500 companies in 2025.

Tesla disclosed that Musk's compensation last year amounted to $158 billion, about 220 trillion won. That is more than Tesla's 2025 revenue of $94 billion. Over the same period, Tesla revenue fell 3 percent from a year earlier, marking its first annual revenue decline since its founding, and GAAP operating profit plunged 61 percent.

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio at S&P 500 companies is typically around 300 to 1. But including Musk, this year's average ratio jumps to 5,387 to 1. The AFL-CIO said it separately calculated an average of 312 to 1 excluding Musk as an outlier. Given Tesla's workforce of about 135,000 employees, Musk's annual pay alone amounts to several times the total wages of all employees.

But the compensation figure is not money that actually went into his hands. About $132 billion of the total reflects shares in a 10-year CEO performance pay package approved by shareholders in 2025. The remaining about $26 billion is an estimate based on an accounting valuation of separate stock awards. Tesla stated in its disclosure that there could be a significant gap between this figure and the actual realised value. As of the disclosure, none of the package shares had vested, and Musk has not received a salary from Tesla for years, leaving his realised pay effectively at $0.

The AFL-CIO report pointed to Musk as bearing significant responsibility for weak performance. It said he put $288 million of personal funds into an anti-electric vehicle campaign and was involved in derailing U.S. policy on electric vehicle subsidies, which reportedly caused Tesla to post a $1.4 billion loss in a single quarter. It also said analysis found that racist remarks on social media damaged the brand image, leading to falling sales and boycott movements.

Other factors cited for the worsening performance included exaggerated promotion related to Full Self-Driving, an aggressive push into new businesses such as the Cybertruck, and the diversion of Tesla's GPU resources to Musk's privately owned AI company xAI. The AFL-CIO assessed that "the employee who caused the biggest damage to the company also received the most compensation."