There are likely a variety of factors that contribute to CEO salaries increasing.
The increase in the labor supply has mostly affected the low end of the spectrum. You don't usually go from subsistence farming directly to the board room. This will change but it takes a long time to percolate up.
Large corporations are usually conservative with their C level executives. Even if someone else could do a 10x better job you are not going to replace an executive if they are outperforming the market. The threshold for being removed is fairly high.
If you started your own company and own a controlling stake it is highly unlikely that you will be removed, even if you are terrible at your job.
The scale of some of the biggest companies is profoundly larger than in the past forty years. For example McDonalds has 375,000 employees worldwide. Their CEO makes around 15.5 million a year. If you were to distribute his salary to each worker in the company (assuming each works 40 hours a week) you could afford to give a 2 cent raise per hour to each employee.
The increase in the labor supply has mostly affected the low end of the spectrum. You don't usually go from subsistence farming directly to the board room. This will change but it takes a long time to percolate up.
Large corporations are usually conservative with their C level executives. Even if someone else could do a 10x better job you are not going to replace an executive if they are outperforming the market. The threshold for being removed is fairly high.
If you started your own company and own a controlling stake it is highly unlikely that you will be removed, even if you are terrible at your job.
The scale of some of the biggest companies is profoundly larger than in the past forty years. For example McDonalds has 375,000 employees worldwide. Their CEO makes around 15.5 million a year. If you were to distribute his salary to each worker in the company (assuming each works 40 hours a week) you could afford to give a 2 cent raise per hour to each employee.