By noon today, your boss may have made as much money as you'll get all year

On a day dubbed Fat Cat Wednesday, bosses will pass the average salary of £28,200 by midday, said the High Pay Centre.

The think tank said the figures confirm how pay differs “dramatically” for senior bosses compared with everyone else.

The median pay for the chief executive of a company in the FTSE100 index of leading stockmarket-listed firms was almost £4 million in 2015, or £1,000 an hour, compared to the national living wage of £7.20, said the report.

The High Pay Centre estimated it would take around 28 hours work for these individuals to pass the UK average wage.

Excessive pay in private firms is now setting a bad example in the public and not-for-profit sectors, with controversy over packages for some university vice chancellors, NHS Trust chief executives, council leaders and charity bosses, the centre claimed.

High Pay Centre director Stefan Stern said: “Our new year calculation is not designed to make the return to work harder than it already is. But 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.”

The Centre is recommending ordinary workers should be represented on the committees that set executive pay and the publication of the pay ratio between the highest and average earner within a company.

Theresa May has promised action to put executive pay under more scrutiny.

Meanwehile, the gender pay gap for women in their twenties has narrowed but that progress will be undone in later life, according to research.

A study looking at the income of the so-called millennial generation found the gap between men and women’s pay in their twenties was down to five per cent.

However, the Resolution Foundation found signs that women will continue to see the gap widen in their thirties and fourties.

The analysis found that baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1965, experienced a pay gap of 16 per cent during their twenties, falling to nine per cent for women born between 1966 and 1980 and then to five per cent for those born between 1981 and 2000.

Laura Gardiner, policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Successive generations of women have benefited from slow but steady progress in closing the gender pay gap.

“Young women today face relatively little disadvantage in terms of their pay packets compared to what their parents’ and grandparents’ generation faced.

“But while many millennial women haven’t experienced much of a pay gap yet, most probably will once they reach their thirties, when they start having children. What’s more this pay penalty is big and long-lasting, and remains for younger generations despite the progress in early careers.

“As people continue to live and work for longer, it’s important that businesses, policy makers and civic society continue to focus on closing the gender pay gap at all ages, and for every generation.”