FTSE 100 bosses have been paid more in three and a half days than the UK average salary of £34,963 with reported average earnings of £3.81m, revealed analysis by the High Pay Centre.

This is 109 times the amount the average worker earns in a year. Their pay is also up an average 9.5% in the last 12 months, compared with 6% for other employees.

Other FTSE 350 executives earn an average £1.32m and will need to work until 10 January for their pay to overtake the annual pay of the median UK worker.

A partner at a Big Four accountancy firm, who are paid an average £871,000 a year, would need to work until 16 January, while top lawyers are earning £1.92m on average, outstripping the average worker's pay packet by 8 January.

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.

‘The High Pay Centre believes that 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.’

The pay gap was criticised by the Trades Union Congress, which flagged the ‘obscene levels of pay inequality’.

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.

‘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.’