By PAUL TEPPER

In the first 11 minutes of the first work day of 2005, the 10 highest paid chief executives in the United States were each paid more money, on average, than a full-time, minimum-wage worker received all year. In one hour, the average earnings for each one of these executives was more than the annual median U.S. household income.

These 10 corporate leaders earned an average of about $124 million in 2005. Topping the list was Richard D. Fairbank of Capital One Financial, who pulled down a cool $249 million and

needed less than six minutes of work to match the typical minimum-wage worker’s annual earnings. The highest paid Los Angeles-based chief executive, Bruce Karatz of KB Homes, was No. 4 on this list, which also included Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum (No. 6) and Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial (No. 10).

By way of comparison, the median U.S. household income in 2005 was $46,326 and a full time U.S. minimum-wage worker brought home $10,712.

These astonishing figures are not limited to a few executives at the top. The chiefs of America’s largest 500 corporations each earned as much money before lunch on the first workday of 2005 as the minimum-wage worker brought home in two years. These chief executives captured an average of $10.8 million that year. Half of all U.S. households each earned less money in all of 2005 than each of these executives averaged for just nine hours work.

What are these guys (yes, they’re almost all guys) doing to earn as much as $119,000 an hour?

When I asked a friend, who doesn’t make much money, how one could justify these stratospheric salaries, he simply said, “They must earn it.” In other words, many of us think that chief executives are very smart, work very hard, generate monster revenues for their companies and are entitled to commensurate rewards.

So how do you explain Micron Technology, which had a six-year annualized loss of more than 21 percent and whose chief executive averaged $7.8 million a year over that period? Or Sun Microsystems’ minus 31.5 percent annualized loss with a chief executive who got $13.3 million? Or Lexmark’s 15 percent annualized loss with a chief executive who got $8.9 million?

OK, so you’re thinking that those are anomalies. What about the many companies that have earned lots of money over the long haul? Shouldn’t leaders be compensated for stellar performance?

People who work hard should be rewarded. Just keep in mind what other hard-working people make: Firefighters make $19.42 an hour, registered nurses make $28.15 an hour, child care workers make $9.47, elementary school teachers make $33.49. Even doctors make only $62.52 an hour. Compare chief executive earnings with the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who makes $202,900 annually.

Also, keep in mind the tenuous relationship between executive pay and a company’s financial performance. The Los Angeles Business Journal reported in May that “establishing a connection between executive compensation and corporate performance is much like trying to show how the weather affects mood swings.”

The Fortune 500 company with the greatest return on revenue in 2005 and more than $3 billion in profits, Kerr-McGee, paid its chief executive $6.5 million. Calpine, which lost $841 million, paid its chief executive $5 million.

1970 and today

In 1970, the U.S. median household income was $8,734 and the top 10 chief executive’s average pay was $455,400. The top paid chief executive that year, Harold Geneen, the head of International Telephone and Telegraph, earned $767,000. Ford’s chief executive (No. 2) earned $500,000 and the chief executive of Johnson & Johnson (No. 3) took home $463,000.

In 1970, the highest-earning chief executive made about 88 times as much as the median household and 254 times as much as a minimum wage worker. In 2005, he earned 5,384 times as much as the average household and 23,284 times as much as a minimum wage worker. Here in Los Angeles, the chief executive of Hilton Hotels (No. 30 on the U.S. chief executive compensation list) earned more than 2,200 times as much as a minimum wage worker in Los Angeles.

Looked at another way, in 1970 ITT’s chief executive earned less than 1 percent (actually about a third of 1 percent) of the company’s 1970 profits ($234 million). In 2005, Capital One Financial’s chief executive earnings amounted to 16 percent of his company’s 2005 profit ($1.54 billion).

Yes, reward hard work but let’s make sure we’re rewarding the child care worker, the janitor, the nurse, the school teacher, the police officer and the firefighter as well as the chief executive.

Paul Tepper is a writer who lives in Los Angeles.