In 2021, the average S&P 500 CEO made 324 times what their company's average worker made [0]. The widest gap was at Amazon, with Bezos making over six thousand times as much as the average worker at his company. The report is from a few years ago, since then the gap has increased further. So yes, many companies could trivially retain hundreds if not thousands of workers simply by cutting the CEO's pay.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/these-20-companies-have-bigg...