The O’Reilly Automotive NOligarchy Profile
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O’Reilly Automotive holds a NOligarchy Score of 55.7 out of 100 — a middling grade that masks a sharp internal divide. The company’s restraint on political spending earns it one of the cleanest influence records in its sector. But that civic tidiness sits alongside a shareholder payout machine that dwarfs what the company’s own workers take home, and a legal record that puts it at the very bottom of its peer group.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
94.3
Wealth Extraction
26.6
Playing by the Rules
9.3
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: 94.32/100. O’Reilly Automotive filed zero dollars in federal lobbying and ran no Political Action Committee (PAC), resulting in one of the highest possible scores on this dimension — meaning minimal recorded spending to shape legislation.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 26.83/100. A low score reflecting billions in stock buybacks against a median worker salary that barely clears $33,000 a year and a chief executive who takes home 128 times what the typical employee earns.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 9.32/100. A near-failing mark. O’Reilly Automotive carries the worst penalty record in its entire sector — five violations totaling nearly $9.9 million in fines for employment discrimination, wage theft, and workplace safety failures.
O’Reilly Automotive ranks 4th out of 5 companies among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Automotive Parts & Accessories Stores), trailing a sector average score of 72.1. While it outperforms on political restraint, its wealth extraction choices and legal record drag it well below what its peers typically show on the public docket. For higher-scoring options in this sector, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Company That Pockets Billions While Shortchanging the Workers Who Built It
O’Reilly Automotive generated $17.8 billion in annual revenue. In fiscal years 2024 and 2025 alone, the company chose to spend more than $4.1 billion buying back its own stock — a sum so large it could have handed every one of its 89,339 employees a raise of $46,715 spread across those two years, or about $23,358 per year. Instead, the median O’Reilly worker took home $33,054 for the year. The company avoided Washington’s revolving door entirely, which is notable — but that political restraint did nothing to protect the workers who filed discrimination and wage complaints against it during the same period, resulting in nearly $10 million in penalties. O’Reilly’s choices reveal a company whose leadership answered primarily to shareholders, not to the people staffing the counter.
No Footprint in Washington
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), O’Reilly Automotive spent exactly nothing on federal lobbying and operated no PAC. The Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings show no registered activity, no hired lobbying firms, and no issue areas on record. For a company with $17.8 billion in annual revenue, that absence of Washington activity is genuinely unusual — O’Reilly commands a significant share of auto parts spending nationwide, yet chose to send no one to Capitol Hill to work the levers of federal policy on its behalf.
No shared lobbying firms connected it to other corporate influence campaigns. No bills were cited in any LDA filing, because no LDA filing exists.
What did show up in the Federal Election Commission (FEC) data was $19,665 in personal political donations made by O’Reilly executives — not corporate PAC funds, but individual contributions reported under their employer affiliation. That figure is modest by corporate-America standards and represents personal choices by named individuals, not a coordinated corporate influence strategy. On the question of institutional political access, O’Reilly’s record is as close to a blank page as any company its size is likely to produce.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
While O’Reilly Automotive kept a low profile in Washington, it ran a very different operation on Wall Street. Over the two-year period, the company channeled billions into a deliberate reduction of its shares outstanding — a mechanism that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — at a scale that dwarfs what its frontline workforce takes home.
The CEO pay gap is stark. The CEO pay ratio is 128:1, per SEC DEF 14A — meaning O’Reilly’s chief executive collected 128 times the earnings of the company’s median worker. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $4.2 million; the median O’Reilly employee earned $33,054. That $33,054 — for someone spending their days behind the counter helping customers track down brake pads and alternators — barely covers the basics for a family.
The shareholder payout. In fiscal years 2024 and 2025, O’Reilly spent $2,076,529,000 and $2,096,962,000 respectively buying back its own stock — a combined total exceeding $4.1 billion. That money flowed to shareholders, who are disproportionately the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of all stock. No dividend payments are recorded for this period, meaning every dollar of shareholder return was concentrated into buybacks — a more targeted mechanism for lifting per-share price that disproportionately rewards insiders and large institutional holders who can time their exits.
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 89,339 workers a $46,715 raise, spread across the last two fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $23,357.61 annual raise the company chose not to give.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 89K employees
Spent on buybacks
$4.2B
directed to shareholders
÷ 89K
workers
Per-worker raise
$46,715
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 71% annual raise on the median worker's $33,054 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 89,339
Your share of the buyback
+$46,715
Per biweekly paycheck
+$898.37
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $4.17 billion.
Spread across O'Reilly Automotive's 89,339 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $46,715 per worker — about $898 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
Executive bonuses and the buyback link. Reducing the number of shares outstanding directly boosts Earnings Per Share (EPS) — and EPS is the exact metric that triggers many executive performance bonuses. The same leadership team that approved more than $4.1 billion in buybacks stood to benefit personally when those buybacks moved the per-share numbers in the right direction. With a 128:1 pay gap already in place, that feedback loop compounds the distance between the boardroom and the shop floor.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense: O’Reilly’s Worst-in-Sector Legal Record
O’Reilly Automotive holds the heaviest penalty record in the entire Automotive Parts & Accessories Stores sector — ranking first for total fines among five tracked companies. Across 2025 and 2026, regulators and courts recorded five violations totaling nearly $9.9 million in fines spanning three offense categories: employment discrimination, wage and hour violations, and workplace safety failures. Every basic category of employment obligation — paying workers fairly, keeping them safe, treating them without discrimination — produced a legal failure over the two-year tracking period.
The offense categories by cost. Employment discrimination generated the single largest payout — $5.6 million from one case alone. Wage and hour violations across two cases added another $4.26 million. Workplace safety infractions across two cases contributed $23,544. The pattern cuts across multiple regulatory agencies and multiple states.
The biggest cases. In 2026, the Washington State Attorney General’s office imposed a $5,600,000 penalty against O’Reilly for employment discrimination — the largest single enforcement action in the dataset. A separate 2025 federal private lawsuit over wage and hour violations resulted in a $4,100,000 settlement. The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries also cited the company in 2025 for $163,458 in wage and hour violations. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines for workplace safety failures appeared in 2025 and 2026.
To put the total fines in perspective: O’Reilly spent $422 in buybacks for every single dollar it paid in penalties. The fines were not a deterrent — they were a rounding error against billions in shareholder payouts.
The subsidy flip. Even as regulators were fining O’Reilly for breaking employment and safety rules, public dollars were simultaneously flowing toward the company. In 2024 and 2025, O’Reilly received a combined $19,267 in government grants — topped by a $10,233 grant in 2025. The amounts are small — but the contrast is plain: public funds flowing toward a company simultaneously racking up discrimination and wage penalties elsewhere.
$19,267
taxpayer subsidies
$9.9 million
regulatory fines
513.2:1
O'Reilly Automotive collected $19,267 in taxpayer subsidies against $9.9 million in regulatory fines — 513.2 penalty dollars for every $1 in subsidies.