About That CEO/Employee Pay Gap : The average chief executive makes $178,400—about five times the average worker, not the 331-to-1 commonly cited.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

One of the most widely cited measures of the “gap” comes from the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch website. The nation’s largest federation of unions laments that “corporate CEOs have been taking a greater share of the economic pie” while wages have stagnated for the rest of us. As proof, it points to a 331-to-1 gap in compensation between America’s chief executives and the pay of the average worker.

That’s a sizable number. But don’t grab the pitchforks just yet.

The AFL-CIO calculated a pay gap based on a very small sample—350 CEOs from the S&P 500. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 248,760 chief executives in the U.S. in 2013.

The BLS reports that the average annual salary for these chief executives is $178,400, which we can compare to the $35,239-per-year salary the AFL-CIO uses for the average American worker. That shrinks the executive pay gap from 331-to-1 down to a far less newsworthy number of roughly five-to-one.

Of course, it’s true that some chief executives heading large multinational companies do command impressive seven- or eight-figure compensation packages. But the data don’t support the rhetorical claim that this slice of the “economic pie” is what’s driving stagnant pay for others on staff.

Should we look at the inequality in pay by comparing tenured professors at Harvard versus adjunct professors at Shmuck Sisters Junior College and then yell inequality?