The widening pay gap between chief executives of leading companies and their workers is the widest in eight years, new research has revealed.
The High Pay Centre reported that the median pay ratio for FTSE 100 chief executives and workers was 130:1 , an increase from 124:1 last year.
This comes as median FTSE 100 CEO pay reached a record £5.06 million, marking an 8.6 per cent rise from £4.66 million in 2024/25, the think tank added. FTSE 100 firms collectively spent over £850 million on executive remuneration in the past year, the report also noted.
The High Pay Centre said excessive spending on top earners by leading firms often comes at the expense of pay increases for the rest of the workforce, and called for reforms to regulations affecting the corporate pay-setting process.
High Pay Centre interim director Andrew Speke said: “The substantial growth in the gap between executive and worker pay in the past year should be a wake-up call to those who’ve turned a blind eye to rising executive pay.
“As our findings show, this is the fourth year in a row that FTSE 100 executive pay has risen, and this growth is starting to substantially outstrip growth in worker pay.
“We hope that a change in prime minister and a renewed focus on economic fairness will lead to economic inequality and corporate excess returning up the political agenda.
“A failure to tackle such disproportionate and inefficient levels of inequality will only further reduce faith in our current economic model and help to accelerate the rise of right-wing populism.”
Last week, new research suggested an increasing number of adults are worried about employment as the labour market continues to slow down.
The Work Foundation said that as concerns about employment rise, its study found that one in eight employers have made redundancies in the last year and real wages have started to stagnate.
Aman Navani, senior researcher at the think tank, said: “The new prime minister arrives in office at a time when an increasing number of people are worried about the future of employment in the UK.
“One in two UK adults are worried about employment, which has risen by 13 percentage points on the year.”
