The last few years have not been kind to Joe Punter. After two decades of growing prosperity in the aftermath of the Thatcherite 1988 stock market “Big Bang”, Harry Enfield’s “Loadsamoney” satire came uncomfortably close to reality. Then “Prudence” Brown, deafened by the resulting din of shekels clinking into Treasury coffers was caught napping by Fred the Shred Goodwin taking his staid old RBS jalopy out on a fiscal Nuremberg ring, and all but writing it off—and any Scots’ reputation for fiscal probity with it.
So, the banks were bailed out with borrowed billions, VAT was jacked up to 20% “temporarily”, and everyone pulled on a hair shirt for a decade-long dose of austerity. This should have come naturally to the plucky Brits, who invented the “Dunkirk Spirit”, when everyone hunkers down in survival mode to see it through together. But it didn’t work out that way.
While workers’ wages and real incomes stagnated and savings made more interest in a sock under the mattress, one select segment did do well—so well that “austerity? What austerity?” might have been their leitmotif. Few would argue that valued skills and responsibility deserve higher remuneration. But at what point are we talking emperor’s clothes?
company the same as 50 workers on minimum wage. But that was not sweet enough.
This year, High Pay Centre researchers, trawling through annual reports and financial submissions. found that bosses at Britain’s biggest companies saw their pay rise by an average 16% year-on-year. In hard figures, the median pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive was £3.91m in 2022, up by £500,000 from £3.38m in 2021. In other words, boardroom bosses are now deemed worth £2,000 per hour. That’s 118 times the £33,000 a year earned by the average worker. So, while rank and file have been given a 37% increase over the decade, CEOs have enjoyed a 300% increase. The top of their “league table” currently looks like this:
- Sir Pascal Soriot (Astra-Zeneca) ££15,300,000
- Charles Woodburn ( BAE Systems) £10,700,000
- Bernard Looney (BP) £10,000,000
- Ben van Beurden (Shell) £9,700,000
- Emma Walmsley (GlaxoSmithKline) £8,450,000
“The rise was in part due to the economic recovery following lockdowns and through bosses having “strong incentive pay awards tied to profitability and share price.”
—The High Pay Centre
Readers who faced eye-watering hikes in both energy and petrol billd should have little trouble explaining why profit incentives placed 3 and 4 so high.
“The report shows Britain is a land of grotesque extremes. We need an economy that delivers better living standards for all – not just those at the top.
“—Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary
Outside of the biggest firms, workers’ average wages have failed to keep up with rising prices, especially for fuel, electricity and food. Inflation, rise at, is currently at 6.8% in the year to July. However, the figure was much higher throughout the majority of 2022, peaking at 11.1% last October.
“While workers in sectors across the board were forced onto picket lines to make ends meet, these top brass were trousering fortunes.”
—Gary Smith, GMB general secretary
“The pay of chief executives is all too often criticised without further thought. Company leaders provide value to customers with the products and services they sell”
—Duncan Simpson, executive director at the Adam Smith Institute
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show regular pay growth, which excludes bonuses, reached 7.8% over the three months to June compared to a year earlier, but actually dropped by 0.6% once inflation was taken into account.
“Workers should not ask for big pay rises to try to stop prices rising out of control,”
—Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England
“At a time when so many households are struggling with living costs, an economic model that prioritises a half-a-million-pound pay rise for executives who are already multi-millionaires is surely going wrong somewhere.“
—Luke Hildyard, director at the High Pay Centre
#1080—694 words
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