I assume here that your point is that your company should use that money to pay higher wages instead of using it for stocks buyback. The two question that need

I assume here that your point is that your company should use that money to pay higher wages instead of using it for stocks buyback. The two question that needs to be answered are - With two more billions in wages, how much more/better would have employees worked ? Would that have had a meaningful impact on the stock price ? - Can these two billions be considered reliable income ? If next year is less good, how easy would it be to reduce wages, if those we increased last year ? The main issue when discussing wages increase is that once they are agreed, they become a de facto mandatory cost, forever. If you have had a good year and have some extra cash, but aren't sure how much of that you can replicate consistently in the next decade, increasing wages is a very bad idea as that one time good news becomes a recurring cost that can put your company in danger down the road. If you want to do that, you can only send a small fraction of said money every year. Let's take an example: HCBS announced a 2 billion stock buyback in Oct 2021. Let's assume they use that amount on wage increase. All of it. They need to sustain that wage increase for 10 years until salaries are back to "normal", so they can "give away" $200 millions per year. They have 226,000 employees. So that amounts to employee cost by $884/year/employee. After tax, costs etc, that will amount to something around $50 / month of "in hand" money. It's cool, but not really the life changing event you might have expected. And I don't think that $50 per month of additional salary will translate in any significant productivity gains that will impact the stock in any meaningful manner.