This year, it took them one hour less than last year: At 1 pm on Thursday, January 4, 2024, the CEOs of the FTSE 100 – the UK's top 100 listed companies – have already earned the equivalent of the median annual salary for a full-time worker in the UK.

The calculation was made by the British think-tank High Pay Centre, which campaigns against pay inequality. It is based on the median pay of the CEOs of these multinational companies, which currently stands at £3.81 million. Comparing this to the UK median annual full-time salary of £34,963, it concludes that it would take these executives around two and a half working days to earn as much as a worker does in one year.

Of course, this comparison is far from perfect. The bosses' salaries are taken from the companies' 2023 annual reports, and therefore relate to their 2022 remuneration. Moreover, the number of hours worked by executives is debatable: The High Pay Centre has chosen to base its calculations at 62.5 hours worked per week, following a Harvard study. Yet the think-tank's aim is simply to draw attention to the scale of pay disparities: Currently, FTSE 100 CEOs earn 109 times the median wage.

'Misguided views'

"Lobbyists for big business and the financial services industry spent much of 2023 arguing that top earners in Britain aren’t paid enough," wrote Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre. "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 High Pay Centre also made comparisons with the country's other levels of high earners. Other FTSE 350 executives – referring to another stock market index that includes a wider range of listed companies – would have to wait until January 10 to overtake the equivalent of the median UK worker's salary. Partners in the top five London-based law firms, on the other hand, would reach this sum as early as January 8. Top bankers at the UK's big five banks would have to wait until January 16, on average.

Nevertheless, while pay inequality exploded in the UK from the 1980s onwards and very high salaries continued to rise until the mid-2010s, the gap now appears to be narrowing. In 2014, the High Pay Centre calculated that a FTSE 100 CEO earned 148 times the median wage. By 2020, it was 117 times. Today, it's "only" 109 times that sum.