If you want recession-themed schadenfreude to match those sandals, look no further.

Women's Wear Daily devotes this week's WWDList feature to executive pay, reporting that in 2007 the retail industry's 10 highest-paid executives made $143.98 million collectively, down a whopping 27.4 percent from 2006.

Sure, 2007 was a bumpy ride for almost every industry, and retail was certainly no exception. The numbers have been declining since April 2007, when a surprising 0.2 percent drop in same-store sales led off what has become an increasingly sluggish retail environment.

But W.W.D.'s figures suggest retail executives are being punished more harshly for their companies' performance than their counterparts in other industries.

While the top retail execs saw more than a quarter of their compensation evaporate in 2007, according to Forbes, the C.E.O.'s of America's 500 biggest companies took home 15 percent less on average in 2007 than in 2006.

The Associated Press' review of compensation, which looks at the companies in Standard & Poor's 500, found that C.E.O.'s grabbed an average 3.5 percent pay increase.

According to the A.P., although the financial sector has been hit even harder than retailers in 2007, median C.E.O. pay dropped only 4.25 percent last year—only one sixth of what top retail execs were docked for a weak year.

The top spot on W.W.D.'s list went to H. Lee Scott, president and C.E.O. of Wal-Mart, which has been one of the few retailers able to weather the economic storm. His $31.6 million in total compensation was nearly double any other executive on the list.

To put that number in perspective, the median pay for workers rose 3.4 percent to $31,509 in 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But in C.E.O. terms, Scott's $31.6 million pales in comparison to Oracle's Larry Ellison, whose $192.92 million payday nabbed the top place on Forbes' list. In the financial sector, Countrywide boss Angelo Mozilo scored the highest pay, $102.84 million.

Given Wal-Mart's size and comparative success, it seems fitting that the company's executives take up three places on W.W.D.'s top-10 list: Chief administrative officer John Menzer is in the third spot, and international vice chair Michael Duke came in fifth.

But the list does have some surprises. The biggest decliner from last year was Target's Robert Ulrich, who saw his total pay package drop by $24 million to $12.2 million, while the company performed well relative to others in the sector. Stores such as Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target have benefited from deep discounts and sales of nondiscretionary things like food and household products.

And though executives at Guess, American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, Aéropostale, and Sears all made the retail top 10, it's mall-based retailers that have been hit the hardest as consumers cut back on discretionary spending in the face of high gas prices and tightening credit.