Alphabet Inc. maintained its lead among fellow top U.S. IT firms in providing the highest median employee compensation in 2021 while recording the sector's lowest CEO-to-average worker pay ratio.

The Google LLC parent's median employee pay for 2021 was $295,884, according to company filings. The figure is up from $273,493 in 2020 and is more than 2x the $117,055 median employee compensation for the 20 biggest U.S. publicly traded IT companies by market capitalization.

Alphabet analyzed the base salary and actual bonus of all its employees, excluding its CEO, as of year-end 2021 to determine its median employee. The company annualized wages and salaries for workers who were not employed for the entire year.

Its CEO-to-median worker compensation ratio dropped to 21x in 2021 from 27x in the prior year. This was due to a decrease in CEO Sundar Pichai's miscellaneous compensation that resulted in his total pay package dropping to $6.3 million, down from $7.4 million in 2020. Pichai did not get equity awards in 2021, the same as in the prior year, while his salary remained at $2 million.

E-commerce company Amazon.com Inc. reported both the lowest median employee pay and highest CEO-to-median employee compensation ratio among the top 20 U.S. IT companies in 2021. Accenture PLC held both spots in 2020.

To identify its median compensated employee for 2021, Amazon analyzed the total pay of all its full-time and part-time permanent and temporary workers globally, which now number more than 1.6 million. The analysis excluded the compensation of Andy Jassy, who succeeded Jeff Bezos as president and CEO in third quarter 2021.

The median salary for Amazon employees was $32,855 in 2021. In contrast, Jassy earned an annual total pay of $212.7 million, including time-based stock grants worth $211.9 million in relation to his promotion. This means the company had a CEO-to-median employee pay ratio of 6,474x, way above the median ratio of 252x.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and chipmaker Broadcom Inc. ranked second and third, respectively, to Alphabet in terms of top median U.S. IT employee pay in the U.S. for 2021. Intel Corp. and Apple Inc. were runners-up to Amazon for the sector's largest CEO-to-average worker compensation ratio.

* Read the S&P Global Market Intelligence ranking of fintech CEO pay. * Read the S&P Global Market Intelligence ranking of info tech CEO pay.