In Atlanta’s corporate suites, the paychecks at the very top are on a completely different scale from the ones most employees see. A new tally of corporate proxy filings shows a stark gap between what Atlanta’s biggest chief executives took home in 2025 and what their median workers earned. Some local CEOs pulled hundreds of times the pay of a typical employee, and at least one company’s filing puts the gulf in the thousands. Those disclosures, filed this spring as companies prepare annual meetings, have sharpened the debate over pay and board oversight.
A roundup of local proxy filings collected by Atlanta Business Journal shows wide CEO-to-worker ratios among Atlanta-headquartered public companies. One standout: a filing by The Coca-Cola Company that estimates a roughly 1,739-to-1 CEO-to-median-employee ratio for 2025.
Those eye-popping ratios fit a national pattern. CEO compensation jumped nearly 10% in 2024 while median worker pay rose much less, according to The Associated Press. Proxy-season data and Equilar analysis summarized by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance also show rising median CEO pay and pay ratios across the largest U.S. firms.
Coca-Cola’s Numbers, In Plain Terms
Coca-Cola’s filing says its identified median employee was a part-time, hourly barista at Costa in the U.K. with annual total compensation of $17,947, while the company reported CEO James Quincey’s 2025 total at $31,208,165, yielding the 1,739:1 estimate. The proxy notes the company used Oct. 1, 2025 exchange rates and total base pay as its consistently applied compensation measure, choices that can push ratios higher when low-paid, part-time roles sit at the median.
Why The Ratios Can Differ So Much
Companies must disclose a CEO-to-median pay ratio under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules, but the requirement allows firms latitude in how they identify the median employee and which pay components to include. That flexibility, along with a de minimis exclusion for small overseas workforces, means ratios often reflect methodological choices as much as raw pay spreads, so they are best read as company-specific snapshots rather than strict apples-to-apples comparisons.
What To Watch In Atlanta
The proxy disclosures give shareholders and workers a clearer window into pay practices, and they are already prompting questions ahead of annual meetings in Atlanta. Investors will be watching how boards explain pay-for-performance links and whether companies change methodology or disclosure in next year’s filings.
Numbers like Coca-Cola’s are not just statistics, they shape reputations, boardroom scrutiny and local debate over wages and fairness. As proxy season proceeds, more companies here are likely to face pointed questions over how they set and disclose pay.
