Figures that can make you dizzy at a time when the United Kingdom is going through a serious cost of living crisis. With the year just beginning, the bosses of the 100 biggest listings on the London Stock Exchange have already won on Thursday, three working days in 2023, the equivalent of the British median annual salary, according to a study by the think tank High Pay Center. It will thus have taken 30 hours of work, nine hours less than in 2022, for the bosses of the FTSE 100, the index of the largest quotations on the London Stock Exchange, to earn this sum, notes the study.
“The great lawyers of the City”, the powerful British financial center, “will have to wait until next week to see [leurs émoluments depuis le début de 2023] exceed the median salary, while the big bankers will have to wait until January 20”. These calculations by the High Pay Center are based on information published by FTSE 100 companies on the pay of their chief executives and government pay statistics in the UK.
A good post-Covid recovery for the richest
“These figures reflect the increase in the highest salaries since the post-Covid recovery, after a decline during the confinements when the economic restrictions were in place”, comments the think tank. The median pay for FTSE 100 chief executives currently stands at £3.41 million (£3.86 million), 103 times the median pay for a full-time worker of £33,000.
The emoluments of the big bosses jumped by 39% over one year, while the British median salary by only 6% over the same period, for inflation which is close to 11% in the United Kingdom. “In the worst period in memory for most people, it’s hard to believe that a handful of high earners will cash in on such amounts,” High Pay Center director Luke Hildyard said in the statement. “To deal with the falling standard of living for the majority” of people in the country, “we need measures to better balance the distribution of income,” he says.