The UK’s High Pay Centre has estimated that FTSE 100 CEOs’ earnings for 2024 have already surpassed the median UK worker’s full time annual salary as of yesterday 4 January.

The calculations are based on the centre’s analysis of the most recent CEO pay disclosures published in companies’ annual reports, combined with government statistics showing pay levels across the UK economy.

As with last year, the executive pay data suggests that CEOs will have to wait until the third working day of 2024 to surpass the annual pay of the median worker.

Median FTSE 100 CEO pay (excluding pension) currently stands at £3.81 million, 109 times the median full time worker’s pay of £34,963. This represents an 9.5% increase on median CEO pay levels as of March 2023, while the median worker’s pay has increased by 6%. 

Using publicly available data, the Centre also found that other FTSE 350 executives (comprising FTSE 100 executives other than the CEO, plus CEOs and other executives of FTSE 250 companies) have median pay £1.32 million and will need to work until 10 January for their pay to overtake the annual pay of the median UK worker.

The figures come against a backdrop of calls from leading figures in the city and big business for UK CEOs to be paid more. In December 2023, Legal and General Investment Management adjusted their executive pay guidelines to permit firms they invest in to offer more generous incentive payments, while earlier in the year the London Stock Exchange Chief Executive argued that low CEO pay levels create a risk to the UK economy.

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said, “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.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way. We need an economy that rewards work – not just wealth,” Nowak said. “That means putting workers on company boards to inject some much-needed common sense into boardrooms. It means taxing wealth fairly. And it means a government that is willing to work with unions and employers to drive up living standards for all.”

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.”