The AutoZone NOligarchy Profile
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AutoZone scores 55.15 out of 100 on the NOligarchy scale — a number that demands explanation. In this scoring system, 100 represents a perfect score: zero spending on political influence, zero shareholder extraction, and a spotless legal record. A score of 55.15 means AutoZone is burning through cash in ways that benefit its largest investors and top executives while leaving its 130,518 store-level workers earning a median salary that most people couldn’t live on.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
87.3
Wealth Extraction
0.0
Playing by the Rules
69.2
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
The Pillar Grades:
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Political Access Grade: 87.35/100. AutoZone filed no federal lobbying expenditures from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (the two-year tracking period), but its Political Action Committee (PAC) and its executives made targeted donations that kept the company’s name in political circles — enough to keep this grade from being perfect.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 0.0/100. This is the alarm bell. A score of zero reflects a company that has poured billions of dollars into buying back its own shares — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — while its median worker earned less than $30,000 a year.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 69.2/100. AutoZone accumulated four Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace safety violations across 2024 and 2025, totaling $73,008 in penalties. Each citation points directly at the conditions faced by the workers doing the physical labor in its stores and distribution facilities.
The Sector Context: AutoZone ranks 5th out of 5 among companies sharing its federal industry classification, Automotive Parts & Accessories Stores, with a NOligarchy score of 55.15 against a sector average of 72.1. AutoZone trails its industry’s baseline by roughly 17 points — landing at the bottom of the peer group on accountability. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: Billions for Buybacks, Poverty Wages for the People Running the Stores
AutoZone generated $18.9 billion in annual revenue — enough to make it one of the dominant forces in American automotive retail. Yet the sharpest imbalance in AutoZone’s public record is not what it spent on lobbying or fines — it’s what it chose to do with its cash. Over recent fiscal years, AutoZone channeled billions into buying back its own stock, a mechanism that rewards the wealthiest shareholders and triggers bonuses for the executives who approve the spending, while the median AutoZone employee — the person helping a customer find the right brake pads on a Saturday morning — took home $29,017 a year. The contrast is not subtle: the company’s CEO received compensation that, measured over three years, ran 1,148 times the median worker’s annual earnings.
A Quiet Check to the Right Party
AutoZone filed zero dollars in federal lobbying expenditures with the Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) system across the two-year period. No registered lobbyists, no external firms, no revolving-door hires cycling between Capitol Hill and the company’s Memphis headquarters. On federal lobbying, the ledger is blank.
But AutoZone’s political footprint is not entirely invisible. Its corporate PAC directed $24,000 in contributions tracked by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — and the partisan tilt is pronounced: 92.3% of that money, or $12,000, went to Republicans, with just $1,000 reaching Democrats. On top of PAC activity, AutoZone executives personally funneled $21,000 in individual contributions through the same period — a parallel channel of political access that runs alongside the corporate PAC and amplifies the overall footprint.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
AutoZone’s wealth gap is best understood not as an abstraction but as a choice made in a boardroom. The company’s CEO pay ratio stands at 1148:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, according to the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s three-year average package was about $33 million. The median AutoZone worker took home $29,017.
The Shareholder Payout: In the two most recently reported fiscal years, AutoZone spent approximately $1.58 billion buying back its own stock in fiscal 2025 and $3.14 billion in fiscal 2024 — roughly $4.72 billion in total — according to the SEC 10-K. That money was used to intentionally pump up stock value to enrich top shareholders — the wealthiest 10% of Americans who own 93% of the stock market.
The Missed Raise: AutoZone made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 130,518 workers a $36,157 raise, spread across the last two fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $18,078 annual raise the company chose not to give.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 130,518
Your share of the buyback
+$36,157
Per biweekly paycheck
+$695.32
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $4.72 billion.
Spread across AutoZone's 130,518 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $36,157 per worker — about $695 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 131K employees
Spent on buybacks
$4.7B
directed to shareholders
÷ 131K
workers
Per-worker raise
$36,157
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 62% annual raise on the median worker's $29,017 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The Dividend Factor: AutoZone recorded no dividend payouts. Rather than splitting shareholder returns between traditional dividends and buybacks, the company concentrated everything into the buyback mechanism — a more targeted tool for inflating per-share price that disproportionately rewards insiders and large institutional holders who can time their exits.
Executive Bonuses: The buyback machine also works directly in the CEO’s favor. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, AutoZone automatically lifts its Earnings Per Share (EPS) — a metric that typically sits at the center of executive performance bonus formulas. The executives who approved the buyback spending are the same ones who pocketed the performance bonuses it triggered. At a 1,148-to-1 pay ratio, that circular arrangement is worth examining: every buyback dollar that inflates EPS also increases the distance between what the CEO earns and what the person behind the parts counter takes home.
A Pattern of Workplace Safety Failures
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, AutoZone accumulated four workplace safety and health violations cited by OSHA, totaling $73,008 in penalties. Four citations in two years is not a string of accidents — it is a pattern.
Regulatory Violations by Year
$73K · 4 cases
$12K
2024
1 case
$61K
2025
3 cases
The Big Case: The largest single penalty, $39,580, was issued by OSHA in 2025. A second 2025 citation added $15,875. Together those two alone account for more than three-quarters of the total fines across all four cases. The consistent agency — OSHA, every time — points at recurring gaps in how the company manages physical safety conditions for the workers in its stores.
To put the fine total in perspective: $73,008 represents a rounding error against $4.72 billion in stock buybacks. AutoZone spent roughly 64,638 times more buying back its own shares than it paid in safety penalties across the same stretch. For a company generating nearly $19 billion a year in revenue, a five-figure OSHA fine is not a deterrent — it is an acceptable operating cost.
The Data Evidence
Every figure in this profile draws from public filings and government databases: