A pay gap isn't just a ratio. It's the difference between building a life and surviving paycheck to paycheck. Here's what the numbers mean on the ground — in your grocery store, your gas tank, your rent.
The real question
A CEO making 100x their median worker isn't automatically a villain — if that worker is making $100K, they're buying a house. But if that worker is making $52K and raising two kids alone in Sarpy County, they're in survival mode.
The MIT Living Wage Calculator measures the minimum income needed to cover basic expenses in a given county — no luxuries, no savings, just the floor. Here's what that floor looks like in Sarpy County in 2025, and how Omaha's major employers stack up against it.
Source: livingwage.mit.edu/counties/31153
One person, no kids
MIT Living Wage covers food, housing, transportation, healthcare, childcare, and essential personal expenses. It does not include retirement savings, vacations, or emergencies. This is the floor, not comfort.
Reality
Reality
The single parent reality
A single parent with two kids in Sarpy County needs roughly $98,000/year before taxes just to cover basic expenses — rent, food, childcare, transportation, healthcare. That's not a vacation. That's not savings. That's just keeping the lights on. At $50K, a single parent with two kids is roughly $48,000/year short of the floor — and no amount of budgeting fixes a $4,000/month deficit.
Sorted by median worker pay, lowest to highest. All data from SEC DEF 14A proxy filings.
CEO: Avner Applbaum
Global workforce — international workers pull the median down significantly
CEO: Jeffery Noordhoek
Lincoln-based student loan servicer — lowest CEO-to-worker ratio of any Nebraska public company
CEO: Derek J. Leathers
Median worker is a truck driver
CEO: Brian Shepherd
Omaha-based billing and revenue management technology company
CEO: Warren Buffett
CEO took a $100K salary. Greg Abel becomes CEO in 2026 at $25M — next year's ratio will look very different.
CEO: V. James Vena
Median worker is a unionized signal foreman — collective bargaining shows
CEO: Todd Becker
Ethanol producer — new CEO Chris Osowski took over August 2025
These are some of the largest employers in the Omaha metro. Because they are privately held, they are not required by law to disclose CEO pay, median worker pay, or pay ratios. What they pay their workers is entirely their own business — which is itself worth noting.
Kiewit Corporation
Employee-owned construction giant
~$16.8B revenue, Fortune 500 #247
Not disclosed
Mutual of Omaha
Major insurer
~$14.6B revenue, Fortune 500 #299
Not disclosed
First National Bank of Nebraska
Largest privately held bank in the US
Not disclosed
CHI Health / CommonSpirit
Nonprofit
Major hospital system
Not disclosed
HDR Inc.
Engineering & architecture
Not disclosed
Physicians Mutual
Insurance
Not disclosed
The bottom line
The ratio alone doesn't tell you whether workers are okay. Union Pacific's 131:1 ratio looks alarming — but their median worker makes $103K. Werner's 100:1 ratio is a different story when the median worker makes $58K and is trying to raise a family.
The real question is whether the people at the bottom can afford to live where they work. In Sarpy County — one of the most expensive areas in Nebraska — the answer for a single parent at most of these companies is no.
CEO pay redistribution alone wouldn't solve it — the math doesn't work at scale. But profit sharing, wage floors, and the kind of investment in workers that shows up in union contracts (see: Union Pacific's median worker) can and does move the needle.
Sources