Yahoo Finance FTSE bosses just earned more than the average UK worker will all year
By lunchtime on January 4th, FTSE 100 bosses will have earned more than the average British worker is paid for a whole year.
At 13:00 GMT, the pay of FTSE 100 (^FTSE) chiefs will have surpassed the £34,963 annual median wage for full-time workers in the UK, according to the High Pay Centre think tank.
It is one hour earlier than when the median worker’s annual pay was estimated to have been surpassed last year.
Top bosses' average reward amounts to £3.81m per year, 109 times the average full-time worker’s pay, the think tank said. It amounts to approximately £1,170 per hour.
The average pay of CEOs has increased by 9.5% since March 2023, while workers’ median pay has increased by 6%.
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Meanwhile, other FTSE 350 executives, including senior executives and bosses outside the biggest 100 firms, will need to work a few more days – until 10 January – to overtake the median UK worker's pay.
It will not be until the start of next week when top city lawyers will also have out-earned the average UK worker’s salary for a year, by the think tank’s estimates.
Top city lawyers including Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy receive an average yearly salary of £1.92m, surpassing the typical wage by 8 January.
Meanwhile, banker earnings won’t have reached the average yearly salary until 17 January. Last year the government scrapped an EU rule capping the bonuses of bankers at 100% of salary.
Everyone in the top 1% of full-time UK workers, earning at least £145,000, will have overtaken the amount by 29 March.
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Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre, said: “Lobbyists for big business and the financial services industry spent much of 2023 arguing that top earners in Britain aren’t paid enough and that we are too concerned with gaps between the super-rich and everybody else. They think that economic success is created by a tiny number of people at the top and that everybody else has very little to contribute.
“When politicians listen to these misguided views, it’s unsurprising that we end up with massive inequality, and stagnating living standards for the majority of the population.”
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has also criticised the pay inequality.
“While working people have been forced to suffer the longest wage squeeze in modern history, City bosses have been allowed to pocket bumper rises and bankers have been given unlimited bonuses,” TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said.
Watch: FTSE 100 bosses earn typical UK annual salary in three days
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