The Target NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
27.9
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Target earns a NOligarchy Score of 27.76 out of 100 — a number that should stop you in your tracks. On this scale, 100 means a company spent nothing on political influence, handed nothing extra to shareholders, and broke no rules. Target sits at 27.76, placing it near the bottom of the accountability ladder in one of America’s most recognizable retail sectors.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
18.9
Wealth Extraction
37.1
Playing by the Rules
32.3
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: 18.86/100. This very low score reflects $4.84 million channeled into federal lobbying and $509,500 more routed through its Political Action Committee (PAC) — a sustained campaign to keep Target’s priorities front and center in Washington, backed by a revolving door of ten former government insiders.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 36.62/100. This score captures a CEO-to-worker pay gap that would make most people set down their coffee, combined with more than $1.4 billion in stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years — money that flowed to shareholders while the median Target employee took home $27,506 a year.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 32.26/100. Eighteen documented violations from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period — totaling just under $4.9 million in penalties. The bulk of that sum came from a single federal wage lawsuit that suggests systematic underpayment, not an isolated mistake.
Target ranks 18th out of 21 companies in the Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers sector. The sector average score is 55.8 — exactly double Target’s 27.76. That gap means Target is not merely trailing peers; it is a pronounced accountability outlier even among an industry that rarely wins public trust contests. For higher-scoring places to shop in this sector, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A $104 Billion Company That Chose Shareholders Over Store Workers
Target pulled in $104.78 billion in annual revenue — yet the median Target employee earned just $27,506 last year, a paycheck so thin that full-time workers in many states qualify for public assistance. Over the same stretch, Target poured more than $1.4 billion into buying back its own stock across fiscal years 2024 and 2025 — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — while its CEO collected compensation 794 times what that median worker earned. Meanwhile, the company racked up nearly $4.9 million in federal and state penalties — including a $4.6 million wage lawsuit — and still collected nearly $587,000 in public subsidies from state and local governments. On top of all that, Target spent more than $5.3 million on lobbying and PAC contributions to shape the rules of the game in Washington. The sharpest imbalance here is not any single number; it is the pattern of choices behind them.
$5.4 million in political spending
Two-story house · 12 ft
1.6×
Stacked as $100 bills, Target's $5.4 million in political spending rises 19 feet — 1.6× the height of a two-story house.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, Target channeled $4.84 million into federal lobbying — $1.9 million in 2024, $2.02 million in 2025, and $920,000 across the first two quarters of 2026. That is not the budget of a company that occasionally checks in with Congress. That is the cadence of an organization running a permanent presence inside the federal government.
On top of the lobbying spend, Target’s PAC funneled $509,500 to federal candidates over the same period. Of the contributions tracked by party affiliation, 55.7% went to Republican recipients and 44.3% to Democratic recipients — a deliberate hedge that buys access regardless of which party controls the committee rooms. Target executives and employees added another $16,316 in personal donations to federal candidates.
Target's PAC gave $160,500 to Democrats and $201,500 to Republicans — a 44.3% / 55.7% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
44.3%
55.7%
Democrats · $160,500
Republicans · $201,500
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
What is Target lobbying about? The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings reveal twelve distinct issue areas, led by trade policy, consumer product safety, and taxation — each of which maps directly to where Target makes and loses money.
Trade policy appeared in 21 separate filing entries. That is not an accident for a retailer that sources billions of dollars of goods from overseas manufacturers. Filings cited concerns about “trade, tariff, and customs policies and proposals affecting retailers” and “responsible sourcing policy proposals affecting retailers,” including Section 301 tariffs. Lobbyists referenced S. 3841, the Last Sale Valuation Act of 2026, a measure related to how imported goods are valued for customs purposes — relevant territory for a company managing a massive global supply chain. Filings also cited the Americas Act (both the Senate version, S. 3878, and its House companion, H.R. 7571), legislation dealing with foreign trade and international finance that was still working through committee during the period.
The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 (H.R. 2853) appeared across multiple issue areas — consumer safety, labor, tax, and financial services filings all named it — as did its Senate companion (S. 1404, also titled the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act), each drawing three mentions in the filings. Earlier versions of the same legislation from the prior Congress (H.R. 895, S. 140, and the Organized Retail Crime Center Authorization Act of 2023, S. 139) also appeared, showing that organized theft from Target’s shelves has been a cross-cutting business concern across multiple legislative sessions.
On taxation — 19 filing entries — lobbyists cited the extension of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), the Buying American Cotton Act of 2025 (H.R. 7230/S. 1919), and provisions inside what became An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14 (H.R. 1), a sweeping budget reconciliation package enacted into law on July 4, 2025. That bill received two mentions in Target’s filings before its passage. The Paperwork Burden Reduction Act — a tax-related measure that was also enacted — appeared once.
Payments policy drew 13 filing entries under financial services. Lobbyists cited the Credit Card Competition Act of 2026 (H.R. 7035/S. 3623) and the Common Cents Act (H.R. 3074 and S. 1525). For a company that processes tens of millions of card transactions a day, credit card interchange fees represent a significant cost — making this lobbying territory entirely predictable. Filings also referenced the GENIUS Act (S. 1582), a payments-related measure enacted on July 18, 2025.
What makes Target’s influence operation particularly effective is the staff it placed behind the filings. Ten of the 20 registered lobbyists working on Target’s behalf are former government insiders — congressional staffers, chiefs of staff, legislative directors, and policy advisors who served in the offices of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, former Vice President Mike Pence, and multiple members of the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel that writes tax law. One lobbyist served as Tax Counsel for the Ways and Means Committee under Chairs Dave Camp, Paul Ryan, and Kevin Brady. Another served as Chief of Staff for a sitting senator and communications director for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. These are not generic policy consultants — they are people with direct relationships inside the rooms where Target’s most pressing legislative questions get decided. Target also retained the outside firm Cornerstone Government Affairs, Inc., which simultaneously lobbied for Garmin Ltd. and Ares Management Corp, giving it a shared footprint across multiple corporate clients.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Target
client
CORNERSTONE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, INC.
lobbying firm
Ares Management Corp
also a client
Garmin Ltd
also a client
Why it matters: the same firm argues Target’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Target’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Wall Street Gets Billions While Store Workers Get $27,506
The single most clarifying number in Target’s profile is the CEO pay ratio: 794:1, per the SEC DEF 14A. For every dollar the median Target employee earned — $27,506 in total annual compensation — Target’s chief executive collected $794. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $21.8 million. To put that in human terms: a full-time Target store worker, earning $27,506 a year, would need to work continuously for nearly eight centuries to match what the CEO received in twelve months. And $27,506 is not a living wage in most American cities — it is roughly what a full-time worker earns at just above federal minimum wage.
Now layer in what Target chose to do with its cash.
The Shareholder Payout: In fiscal years 2024 and 2025, Target spent a combined $1.415 billion on stock buybacks — $1.007 billion in fiscal 2024 and $408 million in fiscal 2025. That is a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses tied to those metrics. The people who benefit most are the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of the stock market. A Target checkout clerk ringing up groceries owns none of it.
The Missed Raise: No total employee headcount is publicly disclosed in the available data, which means a precise per-worker raise calculation cannot be stated with confidence. What can be stated clearly is this: the $1.415 billion Target directed toward buybacks across those two fiscal years dwarfs the nearly $4.9 million in regulatory penalties it paid and the $586,868 in public subsidies it received. The scale of those choices tells the story.
The Dividend Factor: Here is where the picture gets harder to defend. Target did not have to choose between its investors and its workforce. It paid out $2.053 billion in dividends in fiscal 2025 and $2.046 billion in fiscal 2024 — more than $4 billion to shareholders in two years through the traditional dividend channel, on top of the buybacks. Target could have paid every dollar of those dividends to traditional shareholders and still redirected the $1.415 billion in buybacks toward its workforce. It simply chose not to. The decision to layer buybacks on top of already-substantial dividends is a choice to maximize returns for insiders and institutional holders who can time their exits to capture the per-share price inflation — not a financial necessity.
Executive Bonuses: Buybacks are not just shareholder-friendly — they are executive-compensation machinery. When Target reduces the number of shares outstanding, Earnings Per Share (EPS) rises even when underlying profits do not grow. Many executive performance bonus formulas are tied to EPS targets. The same executives who approved $1.415 billion in buybacks directly benefited from the EPS bump those buybacks generated, layering additional take-home pay on top of the $21.8 million CEO package already in place.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense
Eighteen violations. Eighteen separate instances, across the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, where a regulator or a court found Target had broken the rules. The total bill: $4,888,521. For a company with $104.78 billion in annual revenue, that sum represents less than 0.005% of a single year’s sales — a rounding error on a rounding error.
The Pattern: The largest offense category by far is wage and hour violations, which produced a single case worth $4.6 million — nearly 94% of Target’s entire penalty total. The next largest category is workplace safety: 16 separate Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cases spread across multiple locations, totaling $281,830.
WORKPLACE SAFETY OR HEALTH VIOLATION
16 SEPARATE CASES
2024–2026 · $281,830 in penalties
16 separate workplace safety or health violation penalties in 2024–2026 — Target paid $281,830 for the same category of offense, case after case.
One air pollution violation added $6,691. The 16 OSHA incidents across the two-year tracking period are not the fingerprint of isolated bad luck. They are the fingerprint of a company that operates at such scale that safety lapses recur across its national footprint without changing the underlying system. The full docket on the source site extends well beyond this two-year window.
The Big Case: The single largest penalty was a $4.6 million settlement in 2026 stemming from a private federal lawsuit for wage and hour violations. A company that paid its CEO $21.8 million in a single fiscal year and channeled billions to shareholders was found — by a federal court — to have shortchanged its workers on earnings. That is not a compliance failure. That is a priorities failure.
The Subsidy Flip: While regulators and plaintiffs’ attorneys were fining Target for breaking labor and safety rules, governments were simultaneously handing it public money. Across 2024 and 2025, three separate government grants totaled $586,868 in public subsidies — the largest a single 2024 award worth $511,555 from North Carolina. Taxpayers contributed to Target’s bottom line during the same stretch that Target faced wage theft allegations and a string of OSHA citations. The public gave; Target’s workers often did not receive.