{"id":6380,"date":"2026-07-23T09:12:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T13:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/2026\/07\/ai-hr\/average-chro-compensation-sees-16-decline-in-2025-despite-high-executive-pay-packages-ethrworldemea\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T09:12:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T13:12:34","slug":"average-chro-compensation-sees-16-decline-in-2025-despite-high-executive-pay-packages-ethrworldemea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/2026\/07\/ai-hr\/average-chro-compensation-sees-16-decline-in-2025-despite-high-executive-pay-packages-ethrworldemea\/","title":{"rendered":"Average CHRO Compensation Sees 16% Decline in 2025 Despite High Executive Pay Packages, ETHRWorldEMEA"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Share with your CHRO<\/h2>\n<p>Average CHRO compensation at the largest US public companies dropped 16% in 2025 to $3.7 million, down from roughly $4.4 million in 2024, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/hrme.economictimes.indiatimes.com\/news\/industry\/average-chro-compensation-sees-16-decline-in-2025-despite-high-executive-pay-packages\/132574380\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">new Equilar data on CHRO pay packages<\/a>. Cash bonuses and base salaries drove the decline while equity awards held steady at around $2 million for a second straight year. The gender pay gap persists sharply: women hold 32 of the top 50 CHRO positions yet average $3.5 million versus $5 million for their 18 male peers. Kelly Tullier of Visa led all earners at $14.5 million.<\/p>\n<h2>What this means for your business<\/h2>\n<p>The headline number is a 16% cut, but the composition of that cut matters more than the size. Companies didn&#8217;t pull back on equity. They pulled back on cash, which means boards still believe the CHRO role is strategically valuable over a multi-year horizon but are less willing to reward short-term operational performance. If you&#8217;re a CHRO benchmarking your own package, the signal isn&#8217;t that your market rate fell; it&#8217;s that the mix is shifting, and a package heavy on base salary is increasingly out of step with how the most influential HR executives are being paid.<\/p>\n<p>The gender pay gap here is harder to explain away than in most functions. HR is the one C-suite role where women hold clear majority representation, which typically predicts narrowing pay gaps over time. It hasn&#8217;t happened. Four of the ten highest earners are men who hold 36% of the top-50 seats but collect a disproportionate share of total dollars. That pattern suggests the gap isn&#8217;t a pipeline problem or a representation lag; it&#8217;s structural, likely baked into the equity grant sizing that happens at hire and refresh cycles, where negotiating norms and sponsor relationships still skew male.<\/p>\n<p>The decision this reframes isn&#8217;t whether to pay CHROs more in aggregate. It&#8217;s whether your compensation committee is calibrating equity grant size at the individual level or defaulting to a band that quietly advantages whoever negotiated hardest at the offer stage. If your refresh grants are formula-driven without a periodic equity-gap audit, the 2025 data suggests you&#8217;re almost certainly widening a gap you probably think you&#8217;ve already closed.<\/p>\n<p><em>Based on reporting from <a href=\"https:\/\/hrme.economictimes.indiatimes.com\/news\/industry\/average-chro-compensation-sees-16-decline-in-2025-despite-high-executive-pay-packages\/132574380\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Average CHRO Compensation Sees 16% Decline in 2025 Despite High Executive Pay Packages, ETHRWorldEMEA<\/a>, originally published 2026-07-23 04:00:00.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share with your CHRO Average CHRO compensation at the largest US public companies dropped 16% in 2025 to $3.7 million, down from roughly $4.4 million in 2024, according to new Equilar data on CHRO pay packages. Cash bonuses and base salaries drove the decline while equity awards held steady at around $2 million for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[174],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai-hr","tag-chro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6380"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workai.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=6380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}