Amazon awarded CEO Andy Jassy no new stock in 2022

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy did not receive any new stock in 2022, according to a securities filing by the company. The move has notably shrunk the pay gap between Jassy and Amazon’s rank-and-file employees. The filing revealed that Jassy took home a similar amount from his own earlier grants, while the company awarded more than $40 million each to the recently elevated CEOs of its e-commerce and cloud businesses. The ratio of Amazon’s median employee pay globally to Jassy was 1 to 38 in 2022, reflecting a stark decrease from the previous year’s ratio of 1 to 6,474.

Amazon has been forced to cut costs amid inflation and recession fears, leading to its decision to cut jobs and some stock awards. Meanwhile, union officials and US politicians have criticized the compensation given to CEOs such as Jassy, who presides over a workforce of 1.5 million people, the majority of whom work in warehouses. Amazon said its median full-time pay in the US was $41,762.

Jassy’s 2021 award was said by the company to be “intended to represent most of his compensation for the coming years,” and was originally worth $214 million. As such, Amazon had no plans to award any new stock in 2023 or the following year. Although the award has slumped in value since 2021, Jassy still received $31.9 million from older, recently-vested grants in 2022.

Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin, Editing by Sonali Paul

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