Top 10 Highest Paid Aussie CEOs Infographic

Who are the Highest Paid CEOs in Australia Infographic – Click to Enlarge

Embed this infographic in your website by copying and pasting the code below into your source code

<a href="http://www.homeloanfinder.com.au/infographics/top-10-highest-paid-aussie-ceos/" target="_new"><img src="http://www.homeloanfinder.com.au/images/CEO-Infographic-thumb.jpg" alt="Top 10 Highest Paid Aussie CEOs" /></a><br />Produced by <a href="http://www.homeloanfinder.com.au/">Home Loan Finder</a>

2010 was a rough year for many Australians – but not for the top 10 highest paid CEOS. With an extraordinary rise in executive salaries in Australia over the past 10 years, we can all see a widening gap between what CEOs earn and what they choose to pay their employees.

The average worker pulled in a little over $65K in 2010 whilst the average CEO of a top 50 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange raked in over $6.4 million dollars – nearly 100 times the average salary. You may have earned around $30 per hour but these CEOs won’t get out of bed for anything less than $3,000 per hour.

What does this mean in the scheme of things? Well, the average national median house price in June of 2010 was slightly over $550,000 – something many of us will need 25 to 30 years to pay off. To paint a scarier disparity in purchasing power, consider this: if the average worker paid no income tax, wasn’t charged interest on the home loan (fat chance!) and didn’t spend a cent on anything else, it would still take nearly nine years to pay off the mortgage. Whereas under the same conditions, it would take the average CEO less than one month to own the house outright.

King of the Hill – Ralph Norris of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)

The first thing people usually look at in this infographic is the CEO who topped the list, which for 2010, was clearly Ralph Norris. Ralph didn’t even have to ‘win by a nose’ either – he took the crown along with a 75% pay rise in the same year that customers of his bank had their mortgage repayments jacked up considerably.

The infographic shows what the average CBA customer was paying as at January of 2010 for a standard variable rate home loan for the average national median house price of $550,749. It also shows what that same customer had to fork out as at December of 2010 for the same home loan. By December, customers had to find an additional $382.53 per month to service their home loan. So for those who faithfully update the household budget each calendar year, they’re going to have to find an additional $4,590.36 in the budget for the CBA in 2011. In other words, an average worker battling to pay the loan off alone would need at least a 7% pay rise to meet the repayments without making further sacrifices to his/her lifestyle.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), seasonally adjusted estimates show that the private and public sector full-time adult had a pay rise of 3.9% in 2010 – a far cry from the 7% needed to avoid tightening their belts to pay for a roof over their head.

In one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world and amidst discussions of additional levies such as mining tax, carbon tax and flood tax dominating the political arena; and in a time when Australians are struggling to deal with a soaring cost of living, it’s not hard to see why the average Australian views this infographic and shakes their head. But don’t worry – you might just be lucky enough to run into Ralph at the local pub – if you’re a CBA customer, you might even be able to convince him to buy you a beer!