CEOs got a big raise; how about you?

Related topics: stocks, Viacom, Oracle, Whole Foods Market, Michael BrushCEOs got a whopping 24% pay hike last year as corporate profits soared with the recession's end, more than making up for two years of declining pay.The average worker? Not so much. Those lucky enough to still have jobs saw their pay inch up a meager 3.3%, which might have been enough to cover the rising prices of gas and food.That difference in raises for CEOs and working stiffs is the latest turn in a trend that's been nagging CEO pay critics for years. That's the ever-widening gap between those at the top and their underlings, which is creating a superelite in the U.S. -- and not helping investors or the economy.Giving investors a say on payConsider these gaps between some of the highest-paid CEOs of 2010 and workers in their industries:At Viacom (VIA.B, news), CEO Philippe Dauman got an impressive $84.5 million last year, or 1,990 times what the typical Viacom worker got. This assumes his workers make the $42,500 a year, on average, reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the typical pay for employees in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media.Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle (ORCL, news), got similarly regal pay of $70 million last year. That was 750 times the $93,470 earned in 2010, on average, by computer software engineers, according to the BLS. Ellison, unlike a lot of CEOs, actually took a pay cut last year, but he still pulled down $1.35 million per week -- a sum it would take the typical computer software engineer more than 14 years to earn.John Hammergren, the CEO of drug company McKesson (MCK, news), was paid $54.4 million last year. That works out to $210,000 a day, assuming a normal workweek. That's almost three times the $74,590 that a medical scientist earns in a full year, according to the Rosetta Stone BLS. Hammergren's 2010 pay was 732 times the average pay for those workers.Michael Brush Overall, CEOs at SP 500 companies were paid $11.4 million on average last year, up from $9.2 million the year before, according to the AFL-CIO. In contrast, average workers saw their annual pay go up to $33,121, from $32,049 in 2009, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank. So the pay gap of CEOs over workers shot up 20% last year, to 344 times an average worker's pay from 287 times.Back in the 1980s, this pay gap was just 40.The problem with all this? It's bad for business and bad for shareholders, a lot of business experts say.Pay gap details are dueTo be fair to the CEOs I've listed, you can find many just-as-stark comparisons between CEO and average-worker paychecks at the AFL-CIO executive pay watch website. And those I named might pay their workers more than the average rate. But they aren't saying. The companies mentioned in this article declined to offer specific numbers for their workers instead of the industry average.

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