The Office Depot / OfficeMax NOligarchy Profile
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Office Depot / OfficeMax — the retail brand of ODP Corporation — earned a NOligarchy Score of 73.04 out of 100 from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). On a scale where 100 means a company spent nothing on political influence, extracted no wealth from workers, and broke no laws, that near-average score masks a severe internal imbalance: one pillar is nearly pristine, another is respectable, and one is in freefall.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
97.4
Wealth Extraction
27.7
Playing by the Rules
87.8
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: 97.44/100. Office Depot / OfficeMax filed zero federal lobbying disclosures and ran no Political Action Committee (PAC) during the tracking period. No registered lobbyists. No influence firms on retainer. Washington, for all practical purposes, did not hear from this company.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 27.54/100. This is where the score collapses. The company channeled $300 million into buying back its own stock in a single fiscal year while its median employee took home $26,120 a year — producing one of the starkest pay-gap ratios in its sector.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 87.76/100. A single environmental penalty of $10,000 in 2025 sits on the books — a negligible sum relative to the company’s scale, though it still places Office Depot / OfficeMax at the bottom of its two-company sector for penalty size.
Office Depot / OfficeMax ranks 1st out of 2 companies in the Office Supplies, Stationery, and Gift Retailers sector under the federal industry classification our scoring uses for sector baselines, sitting above the sector average score of 71.1. Near-perfect political restraint and a largely clean compliance record lift the overall score — but the wealth extraction numbers remain a serious drag on what could otherwise be a strong result.
The Bottom Line: $300 Million for Shareholders, $26,120 for the Workers Running the Stores
Office Depot / OfficeMax generated nearly $7 billion in annual revenue and chose to direct $300 million in a single fiscal year into buying back its own stock — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. At the same time, the median worker at this company earned just $26,120 a year — barely above the federal poverty line for a family of three. The company spent nothing lobbying Congress and ran no PAC, so it is not buying political favors. What it is doing is funneling cash to shareholders and top executives while the people stocking shelves and running registers take home paychecks that leave almost no financial margin for error.
No Footprint in Washington
The numbers here are unambiguous. Over the full Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 two-year period, Office Depot / OfficeMax reported zero dollars in federal lobbying expenditures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). No issue areas were filed. No bills were cited. No government agencies were contacted. No outside lobbying firms were retained, and no former government officials were hired through a revolving door.
The company also ran no PAC — meaning it poured zero dollars into partisan political committees designed to secure access to elected officials.
The only political spending on record is minimal: Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show $300 in personal donations from individual executives who listed ODP Corporation as their employer. That is not corporate spending — it is individual citizens exercising their right to donate. The company itself contributed nothing.
For a company generating nearly $7 billion in annual revenue and holding a 17.22% share of the U.S. office supplies, stationery, and gift retailers market, the absence of any Washington presence is notable. Many companies of comparable scale maintain dedicated government-affairs teams and six- or seven-figure lobbying budgets. Office Depot / OfficeMax chose a different path — or at minimum, the public record shows no trace of one.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
Here is where the real story lives.
The CEO Pay Gap
Office Depot / OfficeMax’s chief executive officer pay ratio is 363:1, as reported in its SEC DEF 14A proxy filing. That means for every dollar the median employee earned, the CEO pocketed $363. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $9.5 million, while the median employee’s annual earnings landed at $26,120. That $26,120 figure — before taxes, before health insurance premiums, before any deduction — is what the typical Office Depot / OfficeMax worker brought home over an entire year.
The Shareholder Payout
While median workers collected paychecks that left little room for savings, the company channeled enormous sums toward shareholders. Office Depot / OfficeMax spent $300 million on buybacks in fiscal year 2024 — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding designed to concentrate gains among the largest shareholders, who are overwhelmingly drawn from the wealthiest 10% of Americans, a group that owns 93% of all stock market wealth.
No dividend payments are recorded in the public data for the two-year period, meaning all shareholder returns were concentrated into buybacks — a more targeted instrument than dividends. Buybacks disproportionately reward institutional holders and insiders who can time their exits to capture inflated per-share prices; ordinary investors and workers with modest retirement accounts benefit far less.
The Missed Raise
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 19,229 workers a $15,601 raise across the last fiscal year — for anyone earning the median salary, a sum that would represent a nearly 60% lift to a paycheck that currently leaves almost no cushion.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 19K employees
Spent on buybacks
$300.0M
directed to shareholders
÷ 19K
workers
Per-worker raise
$15,601
per employee, 1-year total
Spread over that year, that's a 60% annual raise on the median worker's $26,120 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 19,229
Your share of the buyback
+$15,601
Per biweekly paycheck
+$300.03
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $300 million.
Spread across Office Depot / OfficeMax's 19,229 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $15,601 per worker — about $300 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
Executive Bonuses and the Buyback Loop
The 363:1 pay ratio is not merely a symbol of inequality — it has a direct relationship with the buyback program. When a company reduces its shares outstanding through buybacks, Earnings Per Share (EPS) rises automatically, even if actual earnings stay flat. Many executive compensation packages tie bonus payouts directly to EPS targets. The same executives who approved the buyback spending are the ones whose bonuses are triggered when EPS climbs as a result. The roughly $9.5 million CEO compensation package exists inside that loop.
A Thin Compliance Record — With One Notable Mark
Office Depot / OfficeMax’s legal record over Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 is short but not clean. Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker records one violation in the two-year tracking period: a $10,000 environmental penalty issued in 2025 by California’s recycling and environmental compliance authority, CA-REC. The full case record is publicly available.
Ten thousand dollars is a negligible sum against nearly $7 billion in annual revenue — equivalent to roughly 0.0001% of sales. On its own, a single minor environmental infraction might be written off as a paperwork lapse. But context matters: in a market where its only tracked peer carries a spotless public record, carrying any penalty at all places Office Depot / OfficeMax at the bottom of its sector’s compliance rankings over this period.
There are no recorded public subsidies from government sources, so there is no subsidy-versus-fine contrast to draw here.