While top CEOs make a median salary of $1 million a month, an average worker in Mississippi pulls in $3,138. Here's the median monthly earning of full-time workers in every state

Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from US Census Bureau

• An analysis of top CEO pay by The Wall Street Journal shows that the typical S&P 500 CEO earned over $1 million per month last year.
• That works out to about 256 times the typical full-time American worker's monthly paycheck.
• Median monthly pay varies across the country, with the typical worker in Mississippi making $3,138 per month and the typical worker in DC making $5,891.

Pay for top executives at big US companies is vastly higher than what everyday workers make, and a new report from The Wall Street Journal shows that CEOs have hit an eye-popping milestone in the size of their monthly paychecks.

The Wall Street Journal recently analyzed the 132 corporations in the S&P 500 that had published 2018 compensation for their CEOs as of March 15. They found that the median CEO made $12.4 million last year, which works out to a monthly paycheck over $1 million.

To put that into perspective, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the median full-time, year-round American worker had annual earnings of $46,881 in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. That works out to a monthly paycheck of about $3,907, meaning a CEO making $1 million per month is earning about 256 times what the typical worker does.

Read more: Here's the highest-paying job in every US state

As the map above shows, monthly pay for full-time workers varies across the country. On the lower end is Mississippi, where the median full-time worker makes $3,138 per month, meaning a $1 million monthly paycheck is about 319 times what a typical Mississippian earns.

On the high end of the scale, workers in Washington, DC, enjoy median monthly earnings of $5,891. The typical CEO in the Journal's report still makes 170 times what the typical worker in the nation's capital earns.

Here's the median monthly and annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers in each state and DC: