From Amazon to Starbucks, what companies paid workers in the pandemic

While the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted millions of jobs and most businesses, many workers kept their jobs and their salaries -- and some saw pay rise.

Median pay changed by 5% or less either way at about a third of S&P 500 companies. It rose by more than 5% at 184 companies, and fell by more than 5% at 125.

Those are among the revelations from a Wall Street Journal analysis of annual disclosures by 492 companies using data provided by MyLogIQ. To see the median pay at S&P 500 companies, search or sort the table toward the bottom of this article.

Nearly 140 companies in the S&P 500 -- including Netflix Inc. and railroad CSX Corp. -- said their median worker was paid at least $100,000 last year. Four dozen, including Starbucks Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., said their median worker made less than $30,000 last year. The wages from those four companies were little changed from 2019. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Pay across the U.S. economy remains in flux in 2021, with tight job markets and rising wages in many areas, particularly for low-wage front-line workers. Here is a closer look at 2020's data:

Highest Paid

Most of the best-paying companies have relatively few workers. Four of the 10 top-paying companies employed fewer than 4,000, including Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., which reported its median worker made more than $295,000; it employs 470. The real-estate investment trust, which specializes in biotech and related properties, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Nine of the 25 top-paid median employees are at tech companies or tech-driven media platforms, such as Netflix, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. Five are in the energy sector, and four -- averaging more than $240,000 -- are at pharmaceutical or biotech companies.

At Incyte Corp., the biotech company said more than half of employees work in research and development; the median employee is a doctor of pharmacy with more than three years of experience whose $253,000 in compensation last year included just over $100,000 of incentive pay.

A spokeswoman for Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc., which had the fifth-highest median pay at $250,651, said the company needs highly specialized expertise to develop and produce treatments for rare medical conditions, and pays accordingly. 

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE 

On its website, Netflix says it seeks to pay employees the most they could make at competitors, adjusting annually.

Not all top-paying jobs are in tech or biotech. A union member making just over $259,000 in New York was the median employee at utility Consolidated Edison Inc.

Lowest Paid

The companies reporting the lowest median pay are generally giants catering to mass markets. Auto-parts maker Aptiv PLC -- which employs 151,000 people in 44 countries and was previously called Delphi Technologies -- paid $5,906. Aptiv said the employee is an hourly worker.

Just over a quarter of the 25 lowest-paying companies make or sell clothing or beauty supplies. A similar number make fast food, pizza or cigarettes. Two others are dollar-store chains. Disk-drive maker Western Digital Corp. is one of just three tech companies in the bottom 25. Western Digital didn't respond to a request for comment.

Many operate in industries that depend on armies of part-time, seasonal and temporary workers, who are included when identifying a company's median worker. Under Armour Inc. said its median employee made $6,669 working between 20 and 30 hours a week in one of its stores from August to December. Gap Inc. said it paid its median employee, a part-time retail-sales associate in North Dakota, $7,037 last year.

Companies generally say they abide by local minimum-pay rules and pay competitively.

Under Armour said it recently raised minimum pay for hourly employees to $15 from $10.

CLASH OVER HAZARD PAY FOR GROCERY WORKERS IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC

In a statement, Gap Inc. said 85% of its employees are store workers, four in five of whom are part-time and almost half of whom are under age 23. The company said it gave about 70,000 of its nearly 117,000 workers $300 cash bonuses this year. "We are proud of the opportunities we provide our associates," a Gap spokesman said.

Other companies operate in low-wage countries. Hanesbrands Inc. said 88% of its nearly 61,000 workers are in factories outside the U.S., primarily in Central America, the Caribbean and Asia. Its median employee, in a facility in Honduras, made $5,671 last year. Hanesbrands declined to comment beyond its securities filings.

Global pay variations also affected companies that weren't at the extremes. Amazon said its median full-time U.S. worker made $37,930 last year, about 30% more than its median worker globally and 3.5% above 2019's U.S. figure. The company in late April said it would raise pay for 500,000 U.S. employees by anywhere from 50 cents to $3 an hour.

Starbucks said 120,000 of its nearly 350,000 workers are outside the U.S., and most baristas are part-time, including its median employee, a barista in Canada who made $12,113 excluding any benefits. The company said 90% of restaurant chains reported median pay of $30,000 or less, and that it raised pay by 5% to 11% for many of its workers late last year.

EMPLOYERS MAY NEED TO PAY UP, AS MORE THAN HALF OF US WORKERS PLAN TO ASK FOR RAISE: SURVEY

Biggest Swings

Last year, some of the biggest changes came at companies hard-hit by the coronavirus and its economic effects -- and at some companies that benefited.

With its core live-events business sharply curtailed during much of 2020, Live Nation Entertainment Inc. said it had employed fewer part-time and seasonal employees than normal, leaving full-time and permanent employees making up more of its workforce. That pushed the median higher, a company official said. The pay it reported for its median employee in 2020 tripled, to $57,195 from $18,333 for the median employee identified in 2019.

United Parcel Service Inc. -- which hired more staff to handle a surge in packages as Americans were stuck at home and ordering goods online -- was among the companies with the biggest drops in median pay: to $44,254 from $74,395. FedEx Corp. hasn't reported its 2020 median pay figure, but said 2019's was $49,059.

UPS said its employees are among the best-compensated in its industry and that 2020's median worker, unlike the 2019 one, was a part-timer ineligible for pension benefits.

The median employee at Ford Motor Co. last year made $61,778, down from $110,706 for 2019's median worker. The difference: Last year's employee doesn't participate in the company's defined-benefit pension program, which was closed to new hires in 2004 but still counts in calculating total pay for the regulatory disclosure, a Ford spokesman said. The 2019 median worker did participate in the plan.

JUNE JOBS REPORT TO SHOW GAINS, BUT EMPLOYERS STILL SEARCH FOR WORKERS

This sortable table includes median-employee pay figures as reported by S&P 500 companies, along with how that figure compares with those of companies in the same industry and to the pay of the company's CEO. Scroll or swipe left to see more data for each company.

Methodology: Median-pay data reflect disclosures collected by MyLogIQ from annual proxy statements and other securities filings for 492 companies in the S&P 500 index, as reported through market close on July 2 for companies with fiscal years ending after June 30, 2020. Federal regulations require companies to calculate the median employee's total compensation with the same method used to determine total pay for chief executives. Companies have discretion regarding the types of pay used to identify their median employees. Companies are listed with the primary industry group assigned to them by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Some S&P industry groups have been combined for presentation.