SENIOR bosses will already have raked in more money this week by lunchtime today than the typical worker will earn in the whole year, new figures have revealed.

Today has been dubbed Fat Cat Wednesday, because top executives will receive more than the average salary of £28,200 by noon, said think tank the High Pay Centre.

The median pay for a chief executive in a FTSE100 company was almost £4 million in 2015 — equivalent to £1,000 an hour — compared to the so-called national living wage set by the government at £7.20 an hour, said the report.

FTSE100 chief executives earned around 129 times more than the average pay of one of their employees in 2015, according to the High Pay Centre, under the “generous assumption” that they work 12 hours a day and most weekends while taking fewer than 10 days of annual leave a year.

It would take them just 28 hours’ worth of work a year to exceed the average salary.

Excessive executive pay in private firms is setting a damaging example in the public and not-for-profit sectors by raising expectations as to how much can be earned by university vice-chancellors, council leaders, NHS trust chief executives and charity bosses, the report warned.

High Pay Centre director Stefan Stern said: “Fat Cat Wednesday is an important reminder of the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the UK.

“We hope the government will recognise that further reform to pay practices are needed if this gap is to be closed.

“That will be the main point in our submission to the Business Department in its current consultation over corporate governance reform.”

Mr Stern called for ordinary workers to be represented effectively on company renumeration committees that set the pay of executives and for pay ratios to be published.

The TUC agreed that a shake-up of boardroom pay through corporate governance reform is needed.

General secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Working people deserve a fair share of the wealth they help create.

But while the pay of top executives has been rocketing up, the average weekly wage is still worth less than it was nine years ago.

“The Prime Minister must stick to her promise to tackle excessive pay at the top. And she should keep her commitment to put workers on company boards.”