The Lowe’s NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
23.8
/ 100
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Lowe’s earns a NOligarchy Score of 23.7 out of 100 — one of the lower scores in the Building Material & Supplies Dealers sector, meaning this company registers elevated concern across the dimensions NOligarchy tracks. On a scale where 100 represents zero lobbying, zero shareholder extraction, and a clean legal record, Lowe’s sits well toward the bottom of the dial.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
19.6
Wealth Extraction
14.4
Playing by the Rules
49.8
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: 19.62/100. Lowe’s poured $5.53 million into federal lobbying and channeled another $912,000 through its corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period. That is roughly $6.44 million spent to shape the rules of commerce before Congress and federal agencies ever cast a vote.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 14.07/100. Lowe’s handed billions to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends while paying its median worker $37,371 a year — less than $720 a week before taxes. Its chief executive collected 578 times that amount.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 49.74/100. Two violations and $1,095,000 in penalties over the two-year tracking period. The legal record is short but expensive, and it ranks Lowe’s second-worst in penalty totals among the six companies in its sector peer group.
Sector Context: Lowe’s ranks 5th out of 6 among companies sharing its federal industry classification, Building Material & Supplies Dealers. The sector average NOligarchy score is 55.9; Lowe’s scores 23.7 — more than 32 points below that benchmark. Because Lowe’s scores below 50 and higher-scoring alternatives exist, readers can find better-scoring places to shop in the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: An $86 Billion Giant That Chose Wall Street Over Its 266,000 Workers
Lowe’s reported $86.3 billion in annual revenue, according to SEC EDGAR 10-K (CIK 0000060667), making it one of the largest retailers in the United States — yet the choices its executives made with that revenue tell a story that its earnings slides do not. Over recent fiscal years, Lowe’s deployed billions of dollars into buying back its own stock and paying dividends to shareholders, while the people stocking shelves, loading lumber, and helping customers navigate aisles took home a median salary that qualifies them for federal rental assistance in most American cities. The company also spent $6.44 million on political influence and racked up over $1 million in regulatory penalties — a fine total that amounts to less than a single day of buyback spending in its peak recent year. That is not an oversight; it is a set of deliberate choices made at the top of a very tall building.
$6.4 million in political spending
Two-story house · 12 ft
1.9×
Stacked as $100 bills, Lowe's's $6.4 million in political spending rises 23 feet — 1.9× the height of a two-story house.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, Lowe’s deployed $5.53 million in federal lobbying, according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings. Spending accelerated sharply — from $1.01 million in 2024 to $3.02 million in 2025 — before the first half of 2026 added another $1.5 million. That ramp-up signals a company leaning harder into Washington as the policy environment grew more volatile.
The company ran its influence operation through one outside lobbying firm, with 11 registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress. Among them: one former government insider, Luciano Hayden, who previously served as a Director of Government Affairs and now lobbies on Lowe’s behalf — a direct pipeline from public office to private advocacy. Filings show lobbyists contacted the Senate 97 times and the House of Representatives 96 times, while also visiting the Executive Office of the President 23 times and agencies including the Department of Energy, the Department of Labor, the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. That is not a narrow policy ask — that is a company touching nearly every lever of the federal government.
What Were They Lobbying On?
The issue areas make immediate sense for a company that sells lumber, appliances, power tools, and building supplies to homeowners and contractors. Lobbyists referenced the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act — appearing in multiple forms as Senate bill S. 1404 and House bill H.R. 2853, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 — across multiple consumer safety filings, making retail theft legislation one of the most frequently cited policy threads in Lowe’s lobbying record. Each bill had been referred to committee but not yet enacted at the time of filing; for a retailer with hundreds of large-format stores, organized theft represents a direct hit to the bottom line, so the persistent attention to this legislation is no surprise. Filings also cited H.R. 2853 in the context of efforts to include its provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027.
Energy policy was equally prominent. Filings cited the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2023, specifically the Home Energy Performance-Based Whole-House Rebates Program (Section 50121) and the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program (Section 50122). Lowe’s sells the heat pumps, insulation, and smart home products these rebate programs incentivize consumers to buy — the connection to corporate revenue could not be more direct.
On trade, filings flagged U.S. tariff policy across multiple quarters — specifically Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, Section 232 wood and lumber derivatives tariffs, Section 301 China tariffs, baseline reciprocal tariffs, and emergency tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. A company that sells lumber, hardware, and goods sourced from overseas has enormous exposure to import costs; tariff policy shapes every price tag on every shelf.
Filings also referenced financial services legislation including the Credit Card Competition Act — which would affect the interchange fees Lowe’s pays every time a customer swipes a card — the Common Cents Act, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, and the MAKERS Act, a science and technology bill cited four times across quarterly filings. The enacted reconciliation measure, An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14, also appeared in filings, as did the GENIUS Act — a cryptocurrency regulation bill that became law in July 2025 — in the context of broader financial services provisions Lowe’s lobbyists were tracking.
On top of its lobbying operation, Lowe’s funneled $912,000 through its corporate PAC, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. The partisan split tilted slightly Republican — 53.3% ($305,500) to Republican recipients, 46.7% ($268,000) to Democrats — a classic access-buying strategy that ensures a seat at the table regardless of which party controls committee chairmanships. Lowe’s executives also made $1,395 in individual contributions tracked by the FEC.
Lowe's's PAC gave $268,000 to Democrats and $305,500 to Republicans — a 46.7% / 53.3% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
46.7%
53.3%
Democrats · $268,000
Republicans · $305,500
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
Choosing Wall Street Over the Workforce, Repeatedly
The central fact of Lowe’s wealth extraction story is this: the company’s median worker earned $37,371 in the most recent reported fiscal year, according to SEC DEF 14A. That is $37,371 to work in a warehouse-scale retail environment — lifting, hauling, operating heavy equipment, answering questions about electrical wiring and plumbing, and managing the logistical complexity of a building-supply operation. Meanwhile, the chief executive collected compensation that dwarfs that figure by a staggering margin. The CEO pay ratio is 578:1 — meaning the CEO earned more in a single day than a median Lowe’s worker earned in nearly a year and a half. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $21.6 million.
The Shareholder Payout
Lowe’s chose to execute a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding — a mechanism that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — totaling $4.26 billion over fiscal years 2024 and 2025, according to SEC 10-K filings. In fiscal year 2024 alone, Lowe’s spent $4.05 billion this way. That money flows overwhelmingly to the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of the stock market.
Dividends ran in parallel. Lowe’s paid $2.64 billion in dividends in fiscal year 2025 and $2.57 billion in fiscal year 2024 — a steady, growing cash transfer to shareholders in both directions simultaneously.
The Missed Raise
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 266K employees
Spent on buybacks
$4.3B
directed to shareholders
÷ 266K
workers
Per-worker raise
$16,030
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 21% annual raise on the median worker's $37,371 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 266,000 workers a $16,030 raise, spread across the last two fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $8,015 annual raise the company chose not to give.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 266,000
Your share of the buyback
+$16,030
Per biweekly paycheck
+$308.27
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $4.26 billion.
Spread across Lowe's's 266,000 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $16,030 per worker — about $308 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
The data shows Lowe’s did not have to choose between investors and workers through buybacks alone — it simultaneously paid out $2.57 billion in dividends in fiscal 2024. Traditional dividends reward all shareholders proportionally; buybacks, by contrast, concentrate gains in the hands of executives whose bonuses are tied to per-share earnings and large institutional holders who can time their exits with precision. Lowe’s chose to do both.
Executive Bonuses
When Lowe’s reduced its shares outstanding through buybacks, the math worked in its CEO’s favor. Fewer shares in circulation means each remaining share represents a larger slice of the company’s earnings — Earnings Per Share (EPS) rises automatically, without a single store selling a single extra two-by-four. Many executive compensation packages are structured to trigger bonuses when EPS hits specific targets. The executive who approves the buyback program is often the same executive whose annual bonus depends on EPS growth. At a 578:1 pay ratio, the incentive to keep that mechanism running is substantial.
Fines Treated as a Rounding Error
Lowe’s accumulated two regulatory violations and $1,095,000 in total penalties over the two-year tracking period covering 2024 and 2025, according to Good Jobs First. That places it second-worst in penalty totals among the six companies in its sector peer group. For a company with $86.3 billion in annual revenue, $1.1 million in fines is not a deterrent — it is a decimal point.
The Pattern
The dominant offense category by dollar amount is consumer protection — one case that generated $1.09 million in penalties. A separate workplace safety case assessed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) accounts for the remaining $5,000. The consumer protection penalty alone dwarfs the workplace safety fine by a factor of more than 200. The Good Jobs First source link connects to Lowe’s full historical enforcement docket, which extends well beyond this two-year window.
The Big Case
The single largest penalty — $1,090,000 — was assessed in 2025 by California’s multi-agency enforcement apparatus, flagging a consumer protection violation. California’s consumer protection enforcement is among the strictest in the country; a seven-figure settlement there reflects a substantive finding, not a technicality.
The OSHA case came in 2024 — a $5,000 penalty for a workplace safety violation. Workers at that location faced conditions that federal safety regulators found inadequate. The fine amounts to less than 0.03% of what the CEO earned in the most recent reported fiscal year.
The Subsidy Flip
While regulators were issuing penalties, governments were simultaneously handing Lowe’s public money. Across 2024 and 2025, Lowe’s collected $2,007,439 in public subsidies spread across three grants, according to Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker. The largest single award — $1,800,000 in 2025 — went to a Lowe’s entity in Texas, followed by a $200,000 grant also in 2025 and a $7,439 award in 2024. The irony of governments cutting checks totaling more than $2 million to a company generating $86 billion in annual revenue — while that same company pays workers a median salary below $38,000 — is not subtle.
EXHIBIT — ONE TEACHER-YEAR AT A TIME
28 years of an average teacher’s salary
The $2 million in public subsidies Lowe's collected would fund 28 years of an average teacher's salary.