Victoria's Secret Angels call it quits on little pay: report

Life as an Angel isn’t so heavenly after all.

Victoria’s Secret Angels are flying the coup, according to a New York Post report. Karlie Kloss and Doutzen Kroes are ending their modeling contracts with the lingerie retailer due to little pay and increasing hours.

Kloss and Kroes are among the highest paid models, earning $4 million and $8 million last year respectively, according to the Daily Mail.  However, according to a Page Six source, new Victoria’s Secret contracts are in the $100,000 range rather than the million-dollar range.  Victoria's Secret is one of five retail brands owned by L Brands (LB).

Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task thinks this brings up broader economic issues than pay for women.

“I don’t know so much about pay for women, but I do think it speaks to this issue that corporate profits are at record highs and the percentage of GDP is at a record high, but wages have been stagnant for the most part,” he says.

Task notes that while Victoria’s Secret is cutting back on model pay, the company spares no expense for its fashion show.

“When the Victoria Secret Fashion show came out, remember how much bigger it is and how much money they’re spending on it and how much revenue it drives. Yet they’re not paying their employees, the people who make the show possible, more money. They’re paying them less money than they used to,” he says. “So there’s something off about how corporations are treating all their employees, whether they’re high profile models like this or the people sitting at this desk or the people watching.”

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli points out that this is probably the one example in the labor force where women systematically get paid more than men.

And Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke quips, “there just might be a tiny chance that the Victoria’s Secret models were overpaid to begin with.”

This news comes in contrast to reports that the parent of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods (TJX) will pay all its employees a minimum of $9 dollars an hour.

Santoli believes this marks a big political shift in corporate attitudes.

“Basically the fact that the companies are coming out and announcing it as an across the board move tells you what a front-of-mind political issue it has become, when companies feel they have to assert themselves as not under-payers anymore,” he says. “So that’s the difference… now its actually saying ‘hey look at us we’re going to start paying a minimum above the minimum.’”