The Lululemon NOligarchy Profile
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Lululemon earns a NOligarchy Score of 67.88 out of 100 — a number that looks almost respectable until you understand what’s buried inside it. One pillar is nearly perfect. Another is a failing grade. The third reflects a near-clean enforcement record undermined by one federal safety citation.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
95.3
Wealth Extraction
11.4
Playing by the Rules
95.0
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: 95.33/100. Lululemon spent nothing on federal lobbying and ran no Political Action Committee (PAC) during the covered period. No revolving-door hires, no influence industry. This is a genuine clean slate in Washington.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 11.37/100. This is where the story turns dark. Billions went to shareholders. The chief executive collected 709 times what a typical employee earned. The workforce saw none of it.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 95.0/100. A single, small workplace safety penalty is the only enforcement action on the public record — a near-clean compliance docket that nonetheless sits on top of a workforce earning poverty-level wages.
Lululemon ranks 14th out of 23 companies in the Clothing and clothing accessories retailers sector, trailing the sector average score of 69.7. Despite an immaculate political footprint and a nearly clean enforcement record, the wealth extraction numbers are severe enough to pull the company below the industry standard.
The Bottom Line: Billions for Shareholders, $20,000 for the Workers Folding the Clothes
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), Lululemon made one thing clear: the money is real, and it flows upward. The company generated $11.1 billion in annual revenue and channeled a staggering share of it into buying back its own stock — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. Meanwhile, the median Lululemon employee took home just $20,536 a year — poverty-level earnings in most American cities, for the workers stocking shelves and ringing up sales. The lone federal safety penalty on the books is a rounding error against the billions redirected to shareholders.
No Footprint in Washington
Lululemon posted a near-perfect political access score for a reason: it spent exactly zero dollars on federal lobbying and contributed nothing through a corporate PAC during the two-year tracking period. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filing system shows no registered activity. No issue areas were filed, no bills were cited, no lobbying firms were retained, and no former government officials were brought aboard to work the halls of Congress.
Even executive-level personal donations to political campaigns were minimal — Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show a combined $4,880 in individual contributions tied to Lululemon employees over the period.
This is not a common profile for an $11 billion retailer. Most companies this size have entire government relations departments. Lululemon’s absence from the lobbying register is notable, and it is the single reason the overall NOligarchy score isn’t significantly worse.
Billions Back to Shareholders, $20,536 Left for the Workers
The CEO pay ratio tells the story before a single buyback dollar is counted. The pay gap at Lululemon stands at 709:1, according to the SEC DEF 14A. That means for every dollar the median Lululemon employee earned, the chief executive pocketed 709. The median worker’s total annual salary came to $20,536. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $14.6 million.
Then come the buybacks.
According to SEC 10-K filings, Lululemon poured $1.64 billion into buying back its own stock in fiscal year 2024 — equal to 15.5% of that year’s revenue. In fiscal year 2025, it channeled another $1.18 billion, representing 10.6% of revenue. These are not passive market transactions. They are deliberate choices to reduce the number of shares in circulation, which mechanically pushes up the per-share price and earnings-per-share (EPS) figures — the very metrics that trigger performance bonuses for the same executives who approved the spending.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 38K employees
Spent on buybacks
$2.8B
directed to shareholders
÷ 38K
workers
Per-worker raise
$74,085
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 180% annual raise on the median worker's $20,536 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on repurchasing its own stock over those two fiscal years — $2.81 billion combined — could have instead handed every single one of its 38,000 workers a $74,085 raise, spread across the last two fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $37,042 annual raise the company chose not to give — nearly doubling what the median employee took home in a year.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 38,000
Your share of the buyback
+$74,085
Per biweekly paycheck
+$1,425
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $2.82 billion.
Spread across Lululemon's 38,000 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $74,085 per worker — about $1,425 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
There are no dividends in the record. Not one dollar was paid out in traditional dividends in any covered year. The company abandoned the conventional investor-sharing mechanism entirely, concentrating all shareholder returns into buybacks — a more targeted tool that disproportionately rewards insiders and large institutional holders who can time their exits, while doing nothing for workers. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of the stock market. Every dollar Lululemon funneled into buybacks landed almost exclusively in their hands.
One Fine, Nearly Invisible — Except to the Worker Who Got Hurt
Lululemon’s compliance record contains one enforcement action over the two-year tracking period. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a $7,093 penalty against the company in 2024 for a workplace safety or health violation, according to Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker.
Seven thousand dollars is a number that needs context. Lululemon deployed $2.81 billion on stock repurchases during that same span — meaning the OSHA fine amounted to roughly one dollar for every $396,000 handed to shareholders. It is not a deterrent. It is a rounding error.
The single case keeps this from constituting a pattern on the public record, and by penalty volume Lululemon ranks 8th out of 23 companies in its sector — not the worst compliance posture, but not a clean one either. What the record does confirm is that the workforce bearing poverty-level wages was also working in conditions that attracted federal safety enforcement. The company’s full historical docket on the Good Jobs First source site extends well beyond this two-year window.
No public subsidies were awarded to Lululemon during the tracked period, so no taxpayer-funded grants or tax credits offset these enforcement costs.