The JCPenney NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
71.6
/ 100
jcpenney.com
0
Ranked in
Department Stores
#5
Subsidiary of Catalyst Brands LLC
JCPenney earns a NOligarchy Score of 71.59 out of 100 — a number that reflects not corporate virtue so much as corporate invisibility. As a private company, JCPenney is not required to file the same public disclosures that publicly traded retailers must. That structural silence is itself a form of power: when there is little to see, there is little to hold accountable. The score’s biggest drag is a pay gap that can only be estimated from industry benchmarks, because the company discloses nothing directly.
Current Pillar Scores
Catalyst Brands LLC (parent company) has no federal lobbying or PAC spending of its own — Political Access reflects this company's own filings only. Wealth Extraction and Playing by the Rules reflect this company directly.
Political Access
95.9
Wealth Extraction
23.3
Playing by the Rules
91.4
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: 95.88/100. JCPenney spent nothing on federal lobbying and ran no Political Action Committee (PAC) from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). A handful of employees made modest personal donations, but the company itself left no footprint in Washington.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 23.3/100. This is the profile’s sharpest trouble spot. No stock buyback or dividend data is publicly recorded — private companies are not required to disclose shareholder distributions. But the best available pay gap estimate puts the CEO-to-worker ratio at 1,126:1, drawn from industry benchmarks rather than any figure JCPenney has chosen to publish. That estimated gap is severe enough to drag the score to near the bottom of the scale.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 91.44/100. One workplace safety or health violation — a 2025 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalty totaling $9,045 — is the only enforcement action surfacing on the public docket during this period. That single, small citation places JCPenney third-worst in its sector for penalty totals, but the fine itself is negligible relative to the company’s size.
The Sector Context: JCPenney ranks 5th out of 7 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Department stores — NAICS 455110). The sector average score is 73.4; at 71.59, JCPenney trails that baseline by nearly two points, sitting in the bottom half of a peer group that itself skews toward accountability gaps across the board.
The Bottom Line: An Estimated 1,126-to-1 Pay Gap Behind a Wall of Silence
JCPenney reported $7.6 billion in annual revenue — enough money flowing through a single retail chain to sustain a very large workforce — yet because it operates as a private company, the public cannot see how that revenue is divided between executives and frontline employees or whether any shareholder distributions are being made. The best available estimate places the CEO-to-worker pay gap at 1,126:1, a figure borrowed from industry benchmarks because JCPenney has disclosed nothing of its own. Meanwhile, a 2025 OSHA penalty of $9,045 is so small relative to revenue that it functions less as a deterrent and more as background noise. The sharpest imbalance here is the combination of opaque private ownership and an estimated pay gap that, if it reflects reality, would rank among the most extreme in any sector — a company generating billions in sales that owes the public almost no accounting of how it compensates the people doing the work.
No Footprint in Washington
JCPenney filed no federal lobbying disclosures with the Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) and operated no PAC during the two-year period, according to Senate LDA filings. There are no issue areas on record, no government agencies lobbied, no bills cited, and no hired influence firms. The company’s parent, Catalyst Brands LLC, is also confirmed to have filed no federal lobbying disclosures and operated no PAC during this period.
The only political money connected to the company is $2,332 in personal donations made by individual employees who listed JCPenney as their employer — $1,407 in Q3 2024, $425 in Q4 2024, and $500 in Q1 2026 — recorded by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). That is not corporate political spending; it is individual citizens exercising their personal right to donate. JCPenney itself chose to remain entirely outside the federal influence machinery during this period.
An Estimated Pay Gap Behind a Wall of Silence
JCPenney’s CEO pay ratio is not publicly disclosed. The best available figure is 1,126:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. JCPenney is a private company and therefore faces no Securities and Exchange Commission requirement to publish that ratio — which means the company’s own employees, and the public, have no way to verify how far the gap between the executive suite and the sales floor actually stretches. A ratio of 1,126:1 means that for every dollar a typical frontline worker takes home, the person at the top is estimated to pocket $1,126. That gap remains unconfirmed and uncontested only because no disclosure is required.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for this period. Private companies are not required to disclose shareholder distributions, so whether cash is being channeled to ownership groups — and at what scale — is simply not visible in the public record.
A Workplace Safety Penalty That Barely Registers
During the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, federal regulators cited JCPenney once for a workplace safety or health violation, resulting in a $9,045 OSHA penalty assessed in 2025. That single case is the entirety of what surfaces on the public docket for this period — but it was enough to place JCPenney third-worst in the Department stores sector for penalty totals among the seven companies tracked. That is worth pausing on: one small fine, and the company still ranks near the bottom of its peer group.
The largest — and only — case on record is that 2025 OSHA enforcement action. A $9,045 fine for a workplace safety infraction is a number that would be meaningful to the worker whose safety was put at risk. For a company generating $7.6 billion in annual revenue, it represents less than a rounding error.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.0001% of annual income
$0.1
the same share of income that $9,045 in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
JCPenney's $9,045 in regulatory penalties is 0.0001% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $0.1 ticket.
No government subsidy data is recorded for this period, so there is no public-money-versus-fines contrast to draw.