The Home Depot NOligarchy Profile
A
V
O
I
D
NOligarchy Score
20.5
/ 100
homedepot.com
0
Home Depot scores 20.21 out of 100 on the NOligarchy Score, covering from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — 8 quarters, the two-year tracking period. The score blends three pillars — political spending, shareholder payouts, and legal compliance — to show how a company with $164.7 billion in annual revenue chose to deploy its money.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
8.0
Wealth Extraction
36.3
Playing by the Rules
20.8
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.
•
Political Access Grade: 7.98/100. This reflects $7.18 million in federal lobbying spend and $3,342,201 channeled through its Political Action Committee (PAC) to federal candidates across the two-year period, plus a network of former government staff now working as company lobbyists.
•
Wealth Extraction Grade: 35.63/100. This reflects billions funneled to shareholders through dividends, a 479-to-1 gap between CEO and median-worker pay, and a buyback program that ran $649 million in fiscal 2024 before falling to zero in the most recent fiscal year.
•
Playing by the Rules Grade: 20.76/100. This reflects over $22 million in fines and 23 separate legal cases over the two-year period — the worst penalty total of any company in its sector.
The Sector Context: Home Depot ranks 6th out of 6 in the Building Material & Supplies Dealers federal industry classification — dead last. The sector average score is 57.0; Home Depot trails that baseline by a wide margin, landing further from basic accountability than every one of its peers. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Company That Pays Its Shareholders Before It Pays Its Workers
Home Depot brought in $164.7 billion in annual revenue in its most recent reported fiscal year, yet it poured out roughly $18.1 billion in dividends to shareholders over two fiscal years while accumulating $22.2 million in regulatory penalties across 23 cases — the worst penalty record of any company in its sector. The company simultaneously collected $34.1 million in public subsidies from state and local governments during the very years it was being penalized. Alongside $10,576,672 deployed across lobbying, PAC contributions, and executive political donations to shape the rules in Washington, the CEO took home 479 times what the median Home Depot worker earned. The sharpest imbalance remains the same: a company large enough to absorb billions in shareholder payouts and $19 million in a single consumer protection settlement chose not to give its 472,400 workers even a $687 annual raise.
$10.6 million in political spending
Two-story house · 12 ft
3.2×
Stacked as $100 bills, Home Depot's $10.6 million in political spending rises 38 feet — 3.2× the height of a two-story house.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
Home Depot spent $7,180,000 on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, on top of $3,342,201 deployed through its PAC to federal candidates — split roughly two-thirds to Republicans and one-third to Democrats. Executives separately gave $54,471 in personal political contributions tracked by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
That partisan spread — $885,000 to Democrats and $1.5 million to Republicans — is less a statement of ideology than an insurance policy: money positioned to secure access regardless of which party controls the chamber.
Home Depot's PAC gave $885,000 to Democrats and $1.5 million to Republicans — a 37.1% / 62.9% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
37.1%
62.9%
Democrats · $885,000
Republicans · $1.5 million
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
The busiest issue areas in Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings were Consumer Issues/Safety/Products and Trade, each cited 22 times, followed by Labor Issues/Antitrust/Workplace at 21, Banking at 19, and Taxation at 18. The pattern tracks directly to Home Depot’s business. As a massive importer of lumber, appliances, and tools, the company has a direct stake in tariff policy; filings cited Section 301 and Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs by name, and lobbyists tracked reciprocal tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China across multiple quarters. As a retailer with hundreds of thousands of hourly workers, filings repeatedly referenced both the House and Senate versions of the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2025 — the House version cited 8 times, the Senate version also 8 times — with one filing specifically noting “provisions regarding right-to-work, privacy, and eliminating private ballot elections.” On retail theft, lobbyists cited the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 nine times; the House version had advanced to the Union Calendar by January 2026. On tax policy, filings tracked the reconciliation measure that became Public Law No. 119-21 in July 2025, connecting to the company’s lobbying on corporate tax rates and related provisions.
Home Depot’s lobbyists contacted the House of Representatives 142 times and the Senate 135 times over the period, and also reached the White House Office 31 times, the Treasury Department 26 times, the National Economic Council 24 times, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative 16 times — a sweep of every institution with authority over tariffs, taxes, and labor rules.
Home Depot retained two outside lobbying firms — Invariant LLC, which also represents IKEA North America, Logitech, and Mercari, and Fierce Government Relations, which also represents Apple and Atlas Holdings — giving its filings reach well beyond what a single in-house operation could achieve.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Home Depot
client
INVARIANT LLC
lobbying firm
IKEA North America Services LLC
also a client
Logitech
also a client
Mercari Inc
also a client
FIERCE GOVERNMENT RELATIONS also lobbies for Apple Inc, Atlas Holdings
Why it matters: the same firm argues Home Depot’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Home Depot’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Two of Home Depot’s 31 registered lobbyists previously held government positions. Those insiders include Dena Baron Smith, a former staff director on the House Appropriations Committee, and Jack Schuler, a former Budget Director for the House Armed Services Committee — giving the company direct access to people who once controlled the budgets of the institutions it now lobbies.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
The CEO pay ratio at Home Depot is 479:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, according to the company’s SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s three-year average package was about $18.2 million. The median Home Depot worker — the person stocking shelves, loading lumber, or staffing a register — took home $37,881 for a full year of work.
The Shareholder Payout: Across fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, Home Depot handed shareholders $649 million through stock buybacks and roughly $18.1 billion through dividends — a combined total concentrated among the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of the stock market. That dividend stream alone — $9.2 billion in fiscal 2025 and $8.9 billion in fiscal 2024 — dwarfs every other line item in this profile.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 472K employees
Spent on buybacks
$649.0M
directed to shareholders
÷ 472K
workers
Per-worker raise
$1,374
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 2% annual raise on the median worker's $37,881 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The Missed Raise: Home Depot made a deliberate choice. The money it spent buying back its own stock could have instead handed every one of its 472,400 workers a $1,373.84 raise, spread across the last 2 fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $686.92 annual raise the company chose not to give.
The Dividend Factor: Setting buybacks aside, the dividend picture is even starker. Home Depot channeled roughly $18.1 billion to shareholders in traditional dividends over those two fiscal years — far more than enough to also fund that missed raise. It simply chose not to. And when buybacks ceased entirely in fiscal 2025, the company’s commitment to shareholders didn’t waver; it pivoted to paying out $9.2 billion in dividends that year instead.
Executive Bonuses: The $649 million Home Depot spent on buybacks in fiscal 2024 represented a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — directly rewarding the same leadership whose earnings sat at 479 times the median worker’s take-home pay.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense
Consumer protection violations account for the largest share of Home Depot’s penalties by dollar — $21,727,251 across just 3 cases — but workplace safety infractions were the most repetitive, with 11 separate citations generating $347,187 in fines over the two-year period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026. That combination of a large consumer settlement and a steady cadence of safety citations is not the signature of isolated accidents. Across all categories, Home Depot accumulated 23 cases totaling $22,230,983 — the worst penalty record of any company tracked in the Building Material & Supplies Dealers sector.
WORKPLACE SAFETY OR HEALTH VIOLATION
11 SEPARATE CASES
2024–2026 · $347,187 in penalties
11 separate workplace safety or health violation penalties in 2024–2026 — Home Depot paid $347,187 for the same category of offense, case after case.
The Big Case: The single largest penalty was a $19 million consumer protection settlement in 2024, resolved through a private federal lawsuit rather than a government regulator. The second-largest was a $1,977,251 consumer protection case from California multi-agency enforcement, also in 2024.
The Subsidy Flip: While courts and regulators were extracting over $22 million in penalties from Home Depot in 2024 and 2025, state and local governments simultaneously handed the company $34.1 million in public subsidies across 11 grants over those same years. The largest was a $30 million grant in 2025, followed by a $1.4 million grant also in 2025 — public dollars flowing in one direction even as regulatory penalties flowed in the other.