MONDAY BUSINESS : PREVIEW: Some of the major business and economic events scheduled for this week : Study: Pay Gap Widens Between Workers, Execs

The gap between the pay of average workers and top corporate executives widened into a gulf during the 1990s, according to a study to be released today by two pro-labor think tanks.

“A Decade of Executive Excess,” the sixth annual survey of executive compensation by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, finds the ratio of top executive to factory worker pay has exploded this decade from 42 to 1 in 1990 to 419 to 1 last year.

Had worker pay risen at the same pace as executive pay, the average production worker would earn more than $110,000 a year today, compared with the $29,000 he or she actually makes. And the minimum wage would be $22.08 an hour, rather than the current $5.15.

“It just keeps growing,” said Sarah Anderson, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies who helped write the report. “There seems to be no limits to what American society will accept.”

The report said average annual compensation for a chief executive of a large company was $10.6 million last year, almost a sixfold increase from the $1.8 million of 1990. In 1998 alone, the pay of executives rose 36%, compared with 2.7% for the average blue-collar employee.

Much of the massive gain in executive pay during the 1990s can be attributed to the huge rise in the stock market, as most corporate leaders now rely on exercising stock options for the bulk of their annual compensation. But boards of directors also have been increasing the number of options they grant to senior executives, pay experts say.

The beneficent state of the economy helps explain why there is little public outrage at the moment about the outsize pay packages.