The T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods NOligarchy Profile
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T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods — the retail empire operated by TJX Companies Inc — earns a NOligarchy Score of 57.78 out of 100. Remember: a higher score signals greater corporate accountability. At 57.78, this is a company that trails most of its peers on the measures that matter most to workers and communities. The bulk of that deficit comes from one place: the systematic transfer of cash to shareholders and executives while the people stocking shelves and running the registers take home paychecks that three years of stock repurchase money could increase by nearly $20,000.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
94.9
Wealth Extraction
6.0
Playing by the Rules
57.1
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: 94.92/100. T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods spent nothing on federal lobbying and ran no Political Action Committee (PAC) during the period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). A small amount of executive-level campaign donations was recorded, but no organized influence infrastructure existed.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 5.86/100. Near the floor — one of the worst possible grades. The company channeled billions into stock repurchases and dividend payouts each year while its median worker earned roughly $15,000 annually, and its chief executive pocketed compensation at a ratio that ranks among the most extreme on record.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 55.1/100. Regulators cited TJX operations 11 times across 2024 and 2025 for workplace and environmental violations totaling $476,864 in fines — a pattern that signals recurring compliance failures rather than isolated accidents.
T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods ranks 18th out of 23 companies in the Clothing and clothing accessories retailers sector, well below the sector average score of 69.7. Rather than setting a standard, one of the most dominant retailers in American fashion trails the majority of its industry peers on accountability metrics. For higher-scoring alternatives in this sector, see the Better Alternatives section below.
A $7.5 Billion Transfer — While Workers Took Home $15,000 a Year
Across three consecutive fiscal years, T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods chose to spend more than $7.5 billion buying back its own stock — money it deliberately withdrew from circulation to inflate per-share metrics and trigger executive bonuses. Over that same stretch, the company’s median worker earned approximately $14,994 a year — less than $1,250 a month before taxes. That repurchase program could have handed every one of its 377,000 employees a raise worth nearly $20,000 over those three years. The company simply chose to send that money upward instead.
No Footprint in Washington — With One Small Exception
T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods filed zero federal lobbying disclosures during the two-year tracking period, according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) records. No LDA filings. No lobbying firms on retainer. No former government officials hired to walk the halls of Congress. No PAC contributions were reported during this period.
There is one footnote: a total of $7,500 in individual executive campaign contributions was recorded — $6,000 in Q3 2024 and $1,500 in Q4 2024 — according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. That figure is trivial by industry standards, more personal political activity than a coordinated corporate influence strategy. For a company with $60.4 billion in annual revenue, this is a near-invisible political presence.
That absence of lobbying investment is the single bright spot in this profile — but it also means TJX earns its accountability deficit almost entirely through what it does with its money once it’s inside the company.
Prioritizing Wall Street Over 377,000 Workers
T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods generated $60.4 billion in annual revenue. Its Marmaxx + HomeGoods (U.S.) segments generated $46,486,440,000, representing 14.23% of the Clothing and clothing accessories retailers market — a commanding share by any measure. And it funneled a staggering portion of that cash straight to shareholders.
The CEO Pay Gap
The CEO pay ratio at TJX is 2541:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, according to SEC DEF 14A. That number demands translation: for every dollar the median TJX worker earned, the chief executive received two thousand five hundred and forty-one. The CEO’s three-year average package was about $38.1 million. The median TJX employee earned $14,994 for the full year — a salary that, after taxes, leaves a worker with roughly $1,100 a month to cover rent, groceries, healthcare, and transportation. That is the baseline against which a $38 million pay package is being measured.
The Shareholder Payout
Across fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026, TJX poured $2,484,000,000, $2,513,000,000, and $2,522,000,000 respectively into buying back its own stock — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. Combined, that is more than $7.5 billion over three fiscal years, channeled to a mechanism that primarily enriches the wealthiest shareholders and rewards insiders who hold large equity grants.
On top of that, TJX handed out $1,484,000,000, $1,648,000,000, and $1,842,000,000 in dividends across fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026 respectively — a combined $4.97 billion in traditional investor payouts over the same three years, according to SEC 10-K filings.
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 377,000 workers a $19,944 raise, spread across the last 3 fiscal years.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 377K employees
Spent on buybacks
$7.5B
directed to shareholders
÷ 377K
workers
Per-worker raise
$19,944
per employee, 3-year total
Spread over those 3 years, that's a 44% annual raise on the median worker's $14,994 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The data shows they didn’t have to choose between investors and their workforce. TJX paid out approximately $4.97 billion in traditional dividends over those same three years and still executed more than $7.5 billion in buybacks on top of that. They could have paid those dividends and still funded that worker raise. They simply chose not to.
Executive Bonuses
Those buybacks do more than enrich outside shareholders. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, they mechanically push up Earnings Per Share (EPS) — the very metric that triggers performance bonuses for the same executives who approved the repurchase program. The CEO’s three-year average package of about $38.1 million is not separable from this dynamic: the board sets targets, the company buys back stock, EPS climbs, and the bonus pays out. Workers whose median salary sits at $14,994 a year are not part of that loop.
Safety Violations Across the Chain — Fines That Barely Register
T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods accumulated 11 regulatory violations totaling $476,864 in fines over the two-year tracking period (2024–2025), according to Good Jobs First — which tracks penalties across the company’s full history, so readers should note the two-year scope of this analysis covers only Q3 2024 through Q2 2026.
The dominant pattern is workplace safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited TJX operations 10 times for workplace safety or health violations, totaling $456,369 in penalties. One environmental violation, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), added another $20,495. This is not a single bad year at a single bad location — it is a pattern of citations spread across multiple subsidiaries and locations over back-to-back years.
WORKPLACE SAFETY OR HEALTH VIOLATION
10 SEPARATE CASES
2024–2025 · $456,369 in penalties
10 separate workplace safety or health violation penalties in 2024–2025 — T.J. Maxx / Marshalls / HomeGoods paid $456,369 for the same category of offense, case after case.
The single largest penalty was $115,000, issued by OSHA in 2024, documented in Good Jobs First records. A second OSHA penalty that same year reached nearly $93,000, documented here. For a company pulling in $60 billion a year, a $476,864 fine total across two years amounts to less than a rounding error on a quarterly earnings call — not a deterrent, but a cost of doing business.