The Hobby Lobby NOligarchy Profile
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Hobby Lobby earns a NOligarchy Score of 65.59 out of 100 — a number that sits just below the sector average and conceals a severe internal split. Two pillars look relatively restrained; the third drags the overall score down hard.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
96.7
Wealth Extraction
16.5
Playing by the Rules
71.4
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.
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Political Access Grade: 96.71/100. Hobby Lobby carries no federal lobbying footprint whatsoever — no registered lobbyists, no Political Action Committee (PAC), and no outside influence firms on the payroll from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). A near-perfect score here reflects an almost total absence of institutionalized political spending.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 16.54/100. This is where Hobby Lobby’s score craters. As a privately held company, it discloses almost nothing about what it pays its chief executive or its frontline workers. The best available pay-gap estimate puts the CEO-to-worker ratio at 1,122:1 — more than a thousand times the median shop-floor wage separating the top office from the stockroom. No buyback or dividend data exists on the public record.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 71.42/100. Three federal workplace safety penalties across two years add up to $24,186 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations, offset in the same period by $115,570 in public subsidies. The score reflects a modest but consistent enforcement pattern.
Hobby Lobby ranks 15th out of 22 companies in the Sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers sector, against a sector average score of 68.3. Hobby Lobby trails that average — the estimated executive pay gap is the primary weight pulling it below its peers.
The Bottom Line: A Billion-Dollar Business Hiding Behind Private Status
Hobby Lobby pulls in $7.11 billion in annual revenue according to the NRF Top 100 Retailers 2024 (Kantar; FY2023 US retail sales), making it one of the dominant forces in its sector — commanding roughly 22.5% of the sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retail market. Yet its private corporate structure means no public disclosures about executive earnings, shareholder distributions, or tax strategy are required. The sharpest imbalance the available data reveals: a CEO-to-worker pay gap estimated at 1,122:1, alongside three OSHA citations issued in the same years the company accepted over $115,000 in taxpayer-funded subsidies. The workers stocking the shelves bear the risks that regulators flag; the executives collecting at the top remain shielded from disclosure.
No Footprint in Washington
Hobby Lobby spent nothing on federal lobbying and maintained no PAC during the two-year period. There are no registered lobbyists, no outside influence firms, and no revolving-door hires on the payroll. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filing search returns no active registrations.
The one political money signal in the data is modest: Hobby Lobby-affiliated executives channeled $1,250 in personal contributions to federal candidates — $750 in Q3 2024 and $500 in Q4 2024, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. That is not institutional influence-buying; it is the rounding error of political finance.
For a company generating $7.11 billion in annual sales, this absence of organized federal lobbying is notable. Hobby Lobby has fought high-profile legal battles over religious liberty and employee health coverage — battles that reached the Supreme Court. Yet on the question of lobbying Congress directly, the public record shows nothing. Whether that reflects a deliberate strategy to fight battles in court rather than on Capitol Hill, or simply a private company’s ability to act without disclosing its methods, is not visible in the data.
A Pay Gap Eleven Hundred Times Wide — and No Obligation to Confirm It
Hobby Lobby is a private company. It is not required to publish its chief executive’s pay, its median worker’s earnings, or any ratio between the two. The best available estimate comes from AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks: 1,122:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. That is an industry-derived figure, not a disclosed number — but it is the only yardstick the public record offers, and it places the gap between the corner office and the cutting table at more than a thousand to one.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for Hobby Lobby. The company is privately held, so no securities filings exist from which such figures could be drawn. What cannot be seen cannot be accounted for — and for the people working Hobby Lobby’s registers and stockrooms, that invisibility is not a technicality.
Three Safety Citations and a Government Check — In the Same Two Years
All three of Hobby Lobby’s penalty cases across the two-year tracking period share the same offense category: workplace safety or health violations cited by OSHA, totaling $24,186 in fines. For a company with $7.11 billion in annual revenue, that sum is not a deterrent — it evaporates in less than a second of sales. The workers exposed to whatever hazards OSHA flagged bore the risk; the company paid a figure that barely registers on its books.
The largest single penalty came in 2025 — a $14,186 OSHA citation for a workplace safety or health violation. That same year brought a second $5,000 OSHA citation. In 2024, OSHA issued another $5,000 penalty.
While regulators were issuing those citations, governments were simultaneously handing Hobby Lobby public money. According to Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker records, Hobby Lobby collected two grants totaling $115,570 — $57,703 in 2024 and $57,867 in 2025, both from Nebraska. The program names, grantors, and subsidy types are not listed in the public record, so what these payments were for and under what conditions they were granted is not publicly visible. What is visible: a company with $7.11 billion in annual revenue accepted public funds in each of the same two years it was cited for putting workers at risk.
$115,570
taxpayer subsidies
$24,186
regulatory fines
4.8:1
Hobby Lobby collected $115,570 in taxpayer subsidies against $24,186 in regulatory fines — 4.8 subsidy dollars for every $1 in penalties.