The Burlington NOligarchy Profile
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Burlington’s NOligarchy Score is 55.68 out of 100 — a number that looks middling until you understand what it’s measuring. A perfect score of 100 would mean zero lobbying, zero shareholder payouts, and zero regulatory fines. Burlington’s score reflects a company that stays quiet in Washington and skips corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions entirely, but quietly channels hundreds of millions into its own stock while paying its chief executive over a thousand times what the median employee takes home — and carrying the largest fine record among all 23 clothing-store chains tracked here.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
95.5
Wealth Extraction
18.6
Playing by the Rules
21.4
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: 95.52/100. Burlington spent nothing on federal lobbying and made no PAC contributions from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — a genuinely rare footprint for a company this size. The high score reflects that near-zero Washington presence.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 18.34/100. This is where Burlington’s choices bite hard. The company channeled hundreds of millions into buying back its own stock across multiple fiscal years, and its chief executive pocketed compensation at a ratio of 1,584 times what the median Burlington employee earned — one of the most extreme gaps in the retail sector.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 21.4/100. Burlington’s compliance record is the worst in the Clothing and clothing accessories retailers sector. Three cases, all in 2025, produced over $1.45 million in penalties — led by a wage theft settlement that dwarfs every safety fine combined.
The Sector Context: Burlington ranks 20th out of 23 in the Clothing and clothing accessories retailers sector, where the average NOligarchy score is 69.7. That means Burlington trails the sector average by more than fourteen points — a company that avoids Washington entirely still lands well below its industry peers, dragged down by how it treats its workers’ earnings and its own legal record. For higher-scoring options in this category, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Company That Stays Silent in Washington While Shortchanging Its Workforce
Burlington reported $11.55 billion in annual revenue — enough to put it among the largest off-price clothing retailers in the country. Yet the single sharpest finding in this data is not about lobbying or political donors: it is about what Burlington chose to do with its cash. The company handed more than half a billion dollars to shareholders through stock buybacks across the two most recently reported fiscal years, compensated its chief executive at 1,584 times the earnings of the typical Burlington worker, and then — in the same year — was ordered to pay $1.44 million to workers whose wages it had failed to pay correctly. A company large enough to generate $11.55 billion in sales does not accidentally shortchange its workforce; it makes choices about where the money flows, and this data shows exactly which direction Burlington pointed it.
No Footprint in Washington
Burlington filed no federal lobbying disclosures and made no PAC contributions from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filing record shows a zero balance. Burlington hired no outside lobbying firms, employed no in-house lobbyists on federal filings, and reported no issue areas, no government entities contacted, and no bills referenced in any LDA submission.
For a company with $11.55 billion in revenue operating hundreds of stores across the country — a business deeply affected by import tariffs on apparel, minimum wage legislation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) enforcement standards, and consumer credit conditions — that silence is notable. Burlington simply chose not to engage the federal government as a tool for shaping its operating environment. Whether that reflects strategic discipline or an assessment that the rules already suit them is not visible in the public filing record.
No former government officials appear on Burlington’s lobbying roster — because Burlington has no lobbying roster.
Burlington executives did make individual campaign contributions totaling $4,208 across the two-year period, recorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). These are personal donations reported by individuals who listed Burlington as their employer — not a coordinated corporate PAC strategy. That distinction matters: a PAC pools corporate resources behind specific candidates as an institutional act; individual donations are personal choices. Burlington confirmed zero PAC activity in this period.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce: A 1,584-to-One Pay Gap and Half a Billion in Buybacks
Burlington’s CEO pay ratio is 1584:1, as disclosed in its SEC DEF 14A filing. To put that in human terms: the CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $17.1 million. The median Burlington employee — the person folding coats on the sales floor, working the fitting room, or stocking shelves — earned $10,827 for the year. That is not a salary most people could build a life on. The gap between those two figures — 1,584 to one — is not a rounding error. It is a structural decision about how Burlington values different kinds of labor.
The Buyback Machine
At the same time Burlington was paying its median worker $10,827 a year, it was running a sustained campaign of stock repurchases. Burlington spent $278.4 million on buybacks in fiscal year 2025 and $256.3 million in fiscal year 2024 — a combined $534.7 million across those two years. Each of these repurchases represents a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses tied to earnings per share. The executives who approved the buyback program are the same executives whose compensation packages reward them when that per-share figure rises.
The Missed Raise
Burlington’s annual report does not disclose a total employee headcount, which means a precise per-worker calculation cannot be made from the public record. What can be said plainly: Burlington spent $534.7 million on buybacks in just the two most recently reported fiscal years while paying its median employee $10,827 annually. That $534.7 million, redirected, could have funded substantial wage increases for an unknown number of workers. The fact that Burlington chose not to disclose how many people it employs means the full scale of that tradeoff stays hidden. Accountability requires that number, and Burlington has not provided it.
No Dividends, All Buybacks
Burlington paid no dividends in any year covered by SEC 10-K filings. That means the company did not spread shareholder returns broadly through traditional dividend payments — which any shareholder, large or small, receives equally per share. Instead, Burlington concentrated every dollar of shareholder return into buybacks — a tool that disproportionately rewards large institutional investors and insiders who can time when they sell. Ordinary retail shareholders and long-term small investors get the theoretical benefit of a higher share price; institutional funds and executives with option packages get the realized gains.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense: Worst Compliance Record in the Clothing and Clothing Accessories Retailers Sector
Burlington carries the heaviest penalty record of all 23 clothing-store chains tracked in this analysis — a distinction it earns with just three cases, all concentrated in 2025. Total fines reached $1,459,073 over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, and the pattern of violations tells a consistent story about whose interests Burlington deprioritized when the pressure was on.
The Wage Theft Settlement
The largest case — and the one that defines Burlington’s compliance record — is a $1,437,000 wage and hour violation assessed by the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection in 2025. This is not a paperwork technicality. Wage and hour violations mean workers performed labor they were not fully compensated for. At a company whose median annual take-home pay is $10,827, a missing paycheck or an improperly clocked shift is not a minor inconvenience — it is the difference between making rent and not making rent. The agency that caught this was not a federal regulator: it was the City of New York, acting where federal enforcement had not.
The Safety Record
OSHA cited Burlington twice in 2025, producing a $17,064 fine and a $5,009 fine for workplace safety violations at two separate locations. Together, those two cases total just over $22,000 — less than two-tenths of one percent of the company’s single largest fine in the same year.
The Subsidy Contrast
While Burlington was accumulating regulatory fines for shortchanging workers and failing workplace safety standards, governments were simultaneously handing the company public money. Burlington received $1,017,537 in public subsidies across four grants in 2024 and 2025 — the largest single grant totaling $440,320 in 2025, followed by $421,104 in 2024. In the same years that regulators were penalizing Burlington for underpaying workers, taxpayers were subsidizing Burlington’s operating costs. The total subsidy haul — $1,017,537 — nearly equals the company’s entire fine bill for the same period.
$1 million
taxpayer subsidies
$1.5 million
regulatory fines
1.4:1
Burlington collected $1 million in taxpayer subsidies against $1.5 million in regulatory fines — 1.4 penalty dollars for every $1 in subsidies.
Set against Burlington’s $534.7 million in buybacks across fiscal years 2024 and 2025, the $1.46 million in total fines is barely a rounding error on the company’s shareholder payout — roughly 366 dollars in buybacks for every dollar paid in penalties. That ratio is what makes these fines function less like a deterrent and more like a predictable line item.