The BJ’s Wholesale Club NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
62.2
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BJ’s Wholesale Club earned a NOligarchy Score of 62.09 out of 100 — a score that masks a sharply lopsided record. A modest Washington lobbying operation materialized in the final stretch of the tracked period, and regulatory penalties remain small in both number and dollar terms. The dominant story, however, is unchanged: a CEO whose three-year average earnings outpace the typical BJ’s worker by nearly 900 to 1, and more than half a billion dollars in buybacks across two fiscal years that never found their way to the sales floor.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
71.8
Wealth Extraction
38.7
Playing by the Rules
71.8
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.
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Political Access Grade: 71.78/100. BJ’s Wholesale Club spent $50,000 on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period) and filed disclosures with both the House and Senate. The score reflects a modest but newly established political presence, anchored by one revolving-door hire with deep House committee connections.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 38.35/100. This is where BJ’s record becomes difficult to defend. The company channeled more than half a billion dollars into buying back its own stock across two fiscal years while its median worker earned less than $27,000 annually — a gap between the CEO and the frontline workforce that stretches to 885 to 1 on a three-year basis.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 71.84/100. Five regulatory violations between 2024 and 2025 — spanning both worker safety and environmental categories — produced a combined $71,308 in penalties. Within a 21-company sector peer group, BJ’s sits near the middle of the pack on enforcement exposure.
BJ’s Wholesale Club ranks 10th out of 21 companies among companies sharing its federal industry classification, the Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers sector, against a sector average score of 54.0. At 62.09, BJ’s sits above that average — a position that owes more to a limited regulatory penalty record than to how it compensates the workers stocking its shelves.
The Bottom Line: Half a Billion in Buybacks, a CEO Paid 885 Times the Worker at the Warehouse Door
BJ’s Wholesale Club generated $21.5 billion in annual revenue — enough to rank it as a significant force in American retail — yet the sharpest imbalance in its public record is not about lobbying or regulatory fine print. It is about a deliberate, sustained choice to channel hundreds of millions of dollars each year into a mechanism that rewards shareholders and executives rather than the workforce. Across the two most recently reported fiscal years, BJ’s spent over $506 million buying back its own stock. The median BJ’s employee — the person running the checkout lane or restocking warehouse shelves — earned $26,797 in fiscal year 2025, a figure that would barely cover rent in most of the markets where BJ’s operates. Meanwhile, the CEO’s three-year average package came to roughly $23.7 million. That is not an accident of accounting; it is the outcome of a series of deliberate decisions made in boardrooms.
A Quiet Debut in Washington — With an Insider Already on Board
BJ’s Wholesale Club arrived in Washington during the final stretch of the two-year tracking period. In the second quarter of 2026, the company filed its first Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) disclosure, reporting $50,000 in federal lobbying expenditure — roughly what a mid-size lobbying firm charges for a single month of access work. That is a small number by Washington standards, but it marks a meaningful shift: a $21 billion retailer that previously maintained no organized federal influence operation now has one, however nascent.
The single registered issue area is consumer data and pricing, with filings specifically noting the company was monitoring ongoing congressional committee activity related to “surveillance pricing” — the practice of retailers using real-time data on shoppers’ behavior, location, and purchase history to set individualized prices. That subject has direct relevance to how BJ’s membership model works: the club’s loyalty and membership infrastructure generates substantial data on purchasing patterns, and any federal framework governing how that data can be used in pricing decisions would land squarely on its business.
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1
≈ every 500th business day
SENATE
1
≈ every 500th business day
2 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, BJ's Wholesale Club was named in lobbying filings reaching 2 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
Lobbyists reached both the House of Representatives and the Senate in this single filing period. BJ’s retained one outside lobbying firm to carry those contacts. Critically, the company hired a lobbyist with a significant government pedigree: Jack Ruddy, who previously served as Staff Director of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and before that as the committee’s Deputy Staff Director and as a Legislative Director and Legislative Assistant to Congressman Sam Graves. That is a well-positioned set of congressional relationships to activate when a company wants its voice heard. No Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions were reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The only other political footprint in the data is individual: a BJ’s executive donated $2,000 in personal contributions in Q3 2024 — a sum that would not cover a single hour of senior Washington counsel.
A CEO Earning 885 Times the Person at the Warehouse Door
The wealth extraction story at BJ’s is told most clearly in two numbers sitting side by side in its own SEC DEF 14A proxy filing: $26,797 and 885.
The CEO pay ratio is 885:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid — meaning the CEO’s three-year average package was about $23.7 million. That figure is not a single-year salary; it is the smoothed average across three fiscal years designed to capture the full value of equity awards as they vest. The person running checkout, pulling pallets, or managing the membership desk at a BJ’s warehouse took home a median of $26,797 last year. At that earnings level, it would take that worker roughly 885 years to collect what the CEO averages in a single year.
The Buyback Machine
Across the two most recently reported fiscal years, BJ’s chose to spend a combined sum on a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. In fiscal year 2025 alone, the company channeled $286.8 million into repurchasing its own stock — equivalent to 1.3% of annual sales. The year prior, it was $219.6 million, representing 1.1% of revenue. This is not a one-time opportunistic move; it is a consistent, accelerating program spanning multiple consecutive years.
The Missed Raise
BJ’s Wholesale Club does not publicly disclose its total employee headcount — meaning a precise per-worker calculation of what those buybacks could have funded is not available from the public record. That disclosure gap matters: without knowing how many people work for the company, shareholders and workers alike cannot assess the true scale of the trade-off. What the data does make clear is that the buyback total across those two fiscal years dwarfs the company’s entire regulatory fine bill by a factor of more than 7,000 to 1 — the $71,308 in penalties accumulated across the full two-year period is a rounding error against hundreds of millions in share repurchases.
The Dividend Factor
BJ’s paid no dividends in any of the fiscal years covered by its SEC filings. The company abandoned traditional investor payouts entirely, concentrating all shareholder returns into buybacks — a more targeted mechanism for lifting per-share price that disproportionately rewards insiders and large institutional investors who can time their exits. Ordinary long-term savers holding BJ’s in a retirement account receive no regular income from that position; the benefit flows most directly to those who can sell at the inflated price.
How the Math Rewards the Executive Suite
When a company reduces its total shares outstanding through buybacks, the same earnings get divided across fewer shares — Earnings Per Share (EPS) rises automatically, even if the underlying business generated identical profit. For BJ’s executives, that EPS rise is not incidental: performance bonuses tied to per-share metrics get triggered. The CEO overseeing a buyback program is, in a meaningful sense, approving a mechanism that directly inflates the metrics used to determine their own compensation. The 885:1 ratio in the proxy filing is the result of that system operating as designed.
Fines Totaling Less Than a Rounding Error on a $21 Billion Balance Sheet
Over the two-year period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, BJ’s Wholesale Club accumulated five regulatory violations, producing a combined $71,308 in penalties according to Good Jobs First. The CEO’s three-year average package of about $23.7 million makes the entire two-year fine total something that registers as barely a footnote by comparison.
The Pattern
Workplace safety infractions dominate the violation record, accounting for four of the five cases and $63,808 of the total — all issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 2025. The fifth case, an underground storage tank violation from 2024, contributed the remaining $7,500. These are not isolated incidents from a single bad quarter: they span two consecutive years and two separate regulatory categories, covering both worker safety and environmental compliance at fuel operations. BJ’s ranks 10th out of 21 companies in its sector by penalty total, placing it near the middle of the peer group among warehouse clubs and general merchandise retailers. This two-year window reflects only a fraction of the company’s full docket visible on the source site.
Regulatory Violations by Year
$71K · 5 cases
$8K
2024
1 case
$64K
2025
4 cases
The Big Case
The single largest fine was a $25,000 OSHA penalty issued in 2025 for a workplace safety or health violation. Three additional OSHA enforcement actions followed in the same year, adding $15,875, $11,585, and $11,348 respectively — each for workplace safety infractions at separate locations. The pattern across all four OSHA cases suggests safety failures were not confined to a single site or management team.
When penalties are this small relative to a company’s scale, enforcement loses its deterrent function. For a retailer generating $21.5 billion annually, a $71,308 total fine bill across two years represents roughly 0.0003% of annual sales. At that ratio, the penalty is not a consequence — it is a rounding error.
No public subsidies were recorded for BJ’s Wholesale Club, so there is no subsidy-versus-fine contrast to draw here.