Amazon’s Andy Jassy Needs a Raise

Andy Jassy needs a raise. Amazon's annual disclosure of its top executives' compensation, released today, portrays a CEO who is woefully underpaid given the immensity of the job he has. The company's stock-heavy executive compensation packages are laudable in how they align the interests of executives and shareholders. But shareholders also need top executives to stick around. And seriously, Jassy has good reason to be hunting for a better-paying job.

In 2022, Jassy earned a cash salary of $317,500, roughly the same as those of his other top executives, and no bonus, as is standard at the company. It’s an improvement on the $175,000 that used to be Amazon’s executive salary, but for a CEO overseeing a company with 1.5 million employees and annual sales of $514 billion, it's way too low. By comparison, the CEO of Macy’s, whose company generates one-twentieth the revenue of Amazon, last year earned a salary of $1.3 million and a bonus of about the same amount. Sure, Jassy’s reward is meant to come from stock grants, particularly one he got in July 2021, estimated at the time to be worth $212 million and potentially a whole lot more in the future. But come on! July 2021 was a different era. No one can rely on stock granted in mid-2021 to ever regain the value it had then.