Bosses at biggest UK firms have already made more money than the average worker will in 2025
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The chief executives of Britain’s 100 biggest listed firms will have made more money by noon today than their average worker will in all of 2025, according to new analysis.
Campaigners at advocacy group the High Pay Centre said FTSE 100 bosses enjoy median pay packets of £4.22m, 113 times the median of a full-time worker’s pay of £37,430.
That means top bosses, who as well as high salaries can also receive huge bonuses and payments in shares, have only had to work three days to make the same sum as their employees, in calculations based on the group’s analysis of the recent pay disclosures in annual reports, and government statistics showing pay levels across the economy.
Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “A feeling that the economy works for the enrichment of a tiny elite at the expense of wider society is an underrated cause of populist anger and support for extremist politics. Policymakers who fail to address this inequality are storing up some big problems for the future.
“Reforms introduced by the new government enabling trade unions to reach more workers should help ordinary employees win a fairer share of income that is currently captured by super-rich executives and investors. Bolder measures like representation for elected worker directors on company boards and caps on executive pay would do more to ensure that the wealth generated by the UK economy is shared across the country in a way that’s sensible, sustainable and proportionate.”
CEO pay rose 2.5 per cent this year, the research found, compared to 7 per cent for workers. But top boss pay is still at record levels.
Comparisons between the pay of top bosses and their employees became prominent during the financial crisis of 2007-8 when highly paid bankers crashed the economy.
Many kept their bonuses even as their banks were bailed out by the government or received cheap funding from the state-owned Bank of England.
Executive pay was also a consideration in recent months when it emerged that the bosses at Britain’s beleaguered water companies shared £9.1m of bonuses last year despite the volume of sewage being dumped in the UK’s rivers and beaches.
There have also been defences of high pay. In 2023, London Stock Exchange Julia Hoggett said that votes on executive pay, where shareholders have baulked at particularly generous pay awards for top executives, prevented British businesses from hiring the best.
She said that the same shareholders who nodded through very high pay in the US often blocked UK pay proposals. An analysis by advice firm ISS-Corporate of S&P 500 companies in the US last year found that median pay for CEOs was $15.7m (£12.5m).
