The chief executive officers of America's largest companies were paid an average of $15.6 million in 2016, says a recent study by an economic research group. The Economic Policy Institute published the report written by Lawrence Mischel and Jessica Schieder. They say the average business leader’s pay was 271 times what an average worker earns at the companies they studied. This chief executive-to-worker pay ratio is smaller than it has been in the past few years. In 2014, the ratio was 299-to-1, according to the report. However, it is still much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio between chief executives and workers in 1965. In 1989, that difference was 59-to-1. In the last 30 years, the salaries of chief executive officers, or CEOs, has grown much faster than the pay of the average worker at the companies they oversee.