This week’s labour market release suggests that, for most workers, wage growth remains stuck in the doldrums even as unemployment falls to new lows, with real wages still struggling to regain the ground lost in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis.
The leaders of the UK’s biggest companies suffer no such problem. A recent report from the High Pay Centre, which surveys FTSE 100 CEOs’ annual pay settlements, finds that median executive pay rose 11 per cent between 2016 and 2017. This means the average FTSE 100 CEO is now paid 77 times what the average employee at their company is paid, and 167 times the average wage nationally. The average masks large variations: for a handful of companies, the within-firm pay ratio is more than 1,000 to 1.
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