Pay gap between CEOs and workers set to widen across FTSE 350
The pay gap between executives and workers is set to grow even wider this year, following a brief levelling during the pandemic.
The High Pay Centre said cuts to executive pay during the pandemic led to a fall in the median CEO/median employee pay ratio across the FTSE 350 to 44:1 in 2020/21, down from 53:1 in 2019/20.
The median gap between CEOs and their lower quarter employees fell to 59:1 from 71:1 in 2019/20, meaning that some workers were still earning 59 times less than chief execs.
However, the think tank said early examinations of more recent disclosures indicate that pay gaps will widen again in 2022 once again.
Across the 69 companies that disclosed pay ratios in the first quarter of 2022, the median CEO/median employee ratio was 63:1, or chief execs earning 63 times more. This was nearly double the ratio for the same group of companies in 2021, at 34:1.
The research found that pay ratios were widest in the retail industry with an average pay ratio of 117:1. Ratios were lowest in media (29:1) and financial services (30:1).
The think tank also found that gaps further down the workforce were far narrower, and said that the lack of information regarding the pay of top earners between the CEO and the upper quartile threshold meant that it was difficult to assess some companies.