Dive Brief:
- Top executives focused on technology and human resources have gained in pay and prominence this decade as corporate boards race to find talent for leading digital transformation, according to a Conference Board report released Tuesday.
- Chief technology officers and chief human resource officers appear more frequently on lists of the five highest paid executives in Russell 3000 companies, with the number of CTOs and CHROs on the lists surging 61% and 55%, respectively, from 2021 to 2025, the Conference Board said.
- “Growth in CHRO and CTO roles signals that talent, culture and digital capability are now viewed as enterprise risks, not support functions,” Andrew Jones, coauthor of the report and principal researcher at the Conference Board, said in a statement. “Boards are prioritizing leaders who shape resilience and transformation across the organization,” he said.
Dive Insight:
While rewarding executives with high-demand skill sets, the race to deploy artificial intelligence and other digital technologies is also paying off in gross domestic product growth, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said in a January report.
AI — and the categories of information processing equipment that support it — contributed 0.97 percentage points to economic growth during the first nine months of 2025, exceeding the jolt to growth from technology during the dot-com boom in 2000, the St. Louis Fed said.
“As firms continue integrating AI into their operations and building the infrastructure required to support it, these categories are likely to remain significant drivers of investment well into 2026 and beyond,” St. Louis Fed researchers said.
While top executives leading the rush into AI enjoy pay increases, employees at lower levels may see their compensation lag or even fall, CFO Dive reported.
More than half of U.S. companies are either trimming or plan to trim employee compensation to free up capital for investment into AI, ResumeBuilder.com found in a survey of 866 business leaders.
By the end of 2025, 54% of companies will have cut employee compensation and 26% will have laid off workers to fund AI efforts, according to findings by ResumeBuilder.com.
The compensation reductions extend beyond base salary, influencing raises, benefits, bonuses, and equity or stock awards. The firm surveyed 866 U.S. business leaders.
The number of top executives focused on law-related roles — as chief legal officers, corporate secretaries or general counsels — and appearing on the list of leading executives at Russell 3000 companies rose 21% from 2021 until 2025, the Conference Board said.
The greater prominence of top executives specialized in law “shows how regulatory, litigation and enterprise risk are becoming central to executive decision-making,” Dana Etra, managing director at FW Cook.
“As governance and compliance pressures mount, boards are bringing legal leaders closer to the center of power,” Etra said in a statement.
The mention of top division executives or presidents of subsidiaries fell 15% during the 2021-2015 period, the Conference Board said.
