Hailed as "Fat Cat Wednesday," January 3 marked the day in Britain when the country's richest bosses had already earned more than the average worker will take in all year. Findings from the independent think tank High Pay Centre revealed a staggering new level of inequality among workers in Britain, where executives earning £1,000 per hour exceeded the average U.K. annual salary of £28,000 by lunchtime on Jan. 3, dubbed Fat Cat Wednesday.

The High Pay Centre, which monitors pay at the top end of income distribution, reported that medium pay for the chief executive in a FTSE 100 company in 2015 was £3.973 million. The analysis worked out that average bosses of FTSE firms earn in excess of £1,000 per hour.

Stefan Stern, the centre's director, said of Britain's crippling income inequality: "’Fat Cat Wednesday’ is an important reminder of the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the U.K.”

As U.K. austerity policies continue to crush many living on low income, executives are enjoying a perpetual pay raise. An earlier analysis by the centre revealed how a small group of men at the top of the corporate ladder have been rewarded with eye-watering pay increases and bonuses: in 2015, bosses of Britain's largest companies earned £5.5 million on average, enjoying a 10 percent pay rise.

Those bosses typically earned a salary 129 times higher than their employees, including bonuses and pensions.

In the same year, the Office of National Statistics revealed that average workers’ salaries had increased by just 2 percent – the biggest annual pay rise for workers since the financial crash.

A Mockery of Pledges to Make Britain "Fair for All"

The data confirming Fat Cat Wednesday flies in the face of promises made by British Prime Minister Theresa May to create an economy that is “fair for all.” Since coming into power following the Brexit vote, May has pledged to reform capitalism to work for all, not just a privileged minority.

As Left Futures notes in the article "Why Theresa May is lying to you": " [May] continuing commitment to austerity places her firmly on the right of the political spectrum, and suggest that she has in no way broken from the neoliberal aim of minimizing the role of government.”

The Labour Party was quick to respond to Fat Cat Wednesday findings, with shadow Business Secretary Clive Lewis saying that under the current Tory government, “grossly unfair pay patterns look set to continue.”

It's no secret that growing pay inequality is an ongoing issue in Britain. In 2011, a report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that income inequality among those of working age had risen more rapidly in the U.K. than in any other affluent country since the mid-1970s.

At the time, the OECD warned of “sweeping consequences” for rich countries, pointing to the “rash of occupations and protests, especially by young people.” Austerity has since dug its heels in deeper, and the new report serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing inequality that is fueling discontent.

Recent years have seen campaigners hit the streets in larger numbers to protest Britain's growing inequality. In 2014, tens of thousands gathered in London, Glasgow and Belfast to protest below-inflation pay rises for public sector workers.

As Much a Problem of Low Pay as High Pay

Talking to Occupy.com, Duncan Brown, head of HR Consultancy at the Institute of Employment Studies, confirmed the burgeoning inequality between executive salaries and the salaries of workers. “Executive pay differentials with the rest of the workforce have more than tripled since 2000, even though stock market returns have barely increased over that timescale,” Brown said.

“But this is as much a problem of low pay in Britain’s low skill [and] low productivity economy as it is of high pay at the top,” he added.

On April 1, 2016, the U.K. rebranded its national minimum wage (NMW), which was introduced by the Labour government in 1999, into an obligatory National Living Wage for workers over 25. The Living Wage was implemented at a higher minimum wage of £7.20 an hour.

Despite the rise of the NMW, around two-thirds of U.K. households consider themselves "just about managing" (JAM) on an income between £12,000 and £34,000. A rise in the cost of living along with benefits sanctions have been pinned on the growing number of JAM families in the U.K. Meanwhile, households that simply aren’t managing are also increasing, with more and more people relying on soup kitchens and food banks to eat. One soup kitchen in Blackpool, in the North of England, has seen a 25 percent rise in the number of people it served in the last 12 months.

And it’s not just homeless people relying on soup kitchens. As volunteer Linda McEvilly told the Blackpool Gazette, “We’ve seen a surge in the number of JAMs. These are people who are probably working on a very low wage and if a bed breaks or a curtain falls down they just can’t afford to replace it.”

Jane Ashton, a street kitchen coordinator in Manchester, said unambiguous wealth inequality is rampant in Manchester and the wider county of Cheshire today. “Cheshire is known for its footballers’ mansions and wealthy homeowners. However, just meters down the road from these houses are people living below the poverty line – not just surviving, as the government wants you to think, but living in fear, bills unpaid and rent arrears mounting up, terrified of the next phone call or knock on the door, as they know it will be someone wanting money they don’t have. [They are] choosing whether to eat or have some warmth," she told Occupy.com.

The street kitchen operates every Thursday night next to Manchester Cathedral, which is close to Harvey Nichols, Britain’s leading luxury department store well known for its designer fashion and eye-wateringly expensive price tags. Ashton spoke of the irony of feeding the hungry and desperate directly opposite such an extravagant department store.

“The ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ within a stone’s throw of one another shows today’s society in a nutshell. The gap is ever increasing – it's polarized society at its worst, and reliance on food banks is at an all-time high.”

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he wants to see a cap on the maximum amount that people in Britain can earn. Talking to BBC’s Radio 4 program, Corbyn said, “If we want to live in a more egalitarian society and fund our public services, we cannot go on creating worse levels of inequality.”

With bosses earning as much in two and a half days as the average worker earns all year, implementing a pay cap at the higher end while lifting the minimum wage to an amount more in line with price increases and inflation could help make inroads. But the symptoms of inequality in the world's fifth richest nation run deeper than a policy fix.