About This Project

What this is

In June 2026, executives at four large consumer companies — McDonald's, Kraft Heinz, Whirlpool, and Planet Fitness — told investors the American consumer was "literally running out of money," beset by "heightened anxiety," with "sentiment collapsing to record lows." This project sets those warnings next to the numbers the same companies file with the SEC: revenue and profit, cash returned to shareholders, and how much their CEOs are paid relative to their own median workers.

The point is not that the cost-of-living squeeze is imaginary — it is real, and these firms see it in their sales. The point is the messenger. The companies describing empty consumer wallets are, by their own filings, posting strong profits, returning billions to shareholders, and paying their chief executives hundreds of times what their median workers earn — and those median workers are the very consumers said to be running out of money.

Editorial rules

• Nominal dollars throughout. No figure is inflation-adjusted; some long-run growth reflects rising prices.
• Reported vs estimated, kept separate. Revenue, income, buybacks, dividends, equity, and pay are reported SEC 10-K / DEF 14A figures. Any computed value (e.g. a median worker pay derived from a disclosed ratio) is flagged in its data row and visually separated.
• Every chart cites its source. Each figure carries a caption naming the SEC filing or disclosure it comes from.
• No unsourced figures. CEO net worth is intentionally left blank: these are non-founder professional CEOs with no reliably tracked net worth, and we will not publish an estimate that isn't cited.

Where the numbers come from

Financials and shareholder returns are reported values from each company's SEC EDGAR 10-K filings (XBRL companyfacts), FY2015–FY2025. Pay ratios are from DEF 14A proxy statements; where a proxy discloses only the ratio, the median-worker figure shown is computed (CEO comp ÷ ratio) and flagged as such. The cost-of-living claims are from a 2026-06-05 Yahoo Finance compilation; speaker and role attributions were cross-checked against company releases and proxies, but exact quote wording awaits earnings-call transcripts. Every source is listed on the Sources page.

What's not here yet

This is the v1 view. Four charts — claims-vs-revenue, net income, the CEO pay ratio, and shareholder returns — are built on complete data. Market capitalisation, C-suite (all-NEO) compensation, announced layoffs, and a full-decade pay-ratio backfill are documented in the data dictionary and ship in a later release as their data is completed.

Who built it

This project is published by Black Mesa Research Labs (BMRL), an independent research operation that produces structured datasets and long-form analysis on public-interest topics. It is not affiliated with any company, political party, or government agency. Sibling projects cover dark money, security-state spending, inflation, and farm subsidies.

How to cite

For academic or journalistic use, cite as:

Black Mesa Research Labs. Running Out of Money? Corporate Cost-of-Living Claims vs SEC Filings (FY2015–FY2025). Compiled June 2026. Available at: https://poormouth.blackmesalabs.org

For specific data points, cite the primary source listed in the relevant CSV row or on the sources list. BMRL compiles and structures the data; the underlying figures belong to the SEC filers.

License

The compiled dataset (CSV files and analysis) is released under CC BY 4.0. You may share and adapt it for any purpose with attribution. Underlying SEC filing data is in the public domain.