When the work day ended Tuesday, top bosses in the United Kingdom earned more than the average worker will in a year.

Think about that: On just the second work day of 2016, the fat cats running the European nation’s top 100 companies would have earned more than their employees will during the next 11 months-plus.

Talk about inequity.

High Pay Centre, an independent think tank, dubbed Jan. 5 Fat Cat Day to draw public attention to the “continuing problem of the unfair pay gap” between the top 1 percent and the 99 percent.

According to the group, FTSE 100 chief executives are paid an average $7.25 million a year, while the average annual pay of UK workers is $40,414.

That’s a CEO to employee salary ratio of 179:1. Put another way, for each $1 earned by the average worker, the company’s CEO makes $179.

Certainly this phenomenon is not limited to the UK. We have experienced this in the United States, with an obscenely growing gap between the top 1 percent and the 99 percent.

The Occupy Wall Street movement brought attention to it in recent years, prompted, as with the British group, by the global economic collapse.

PayScale reported the ratio of CEO pay to median employee pay for Fortune 100 companies. Here are some examples: Walmart, 1,034:1; Walt Disney, 557:1; McDonald’s, 435:1; Comcast, 370:1; Wells Fargo, 186:1; Verizon Communications, 145:1; Allstate, 103:1; and Costco Wholesale, 57:1.

We take this very seriously. And we call, yet again, for a raise in the minimum wage to give workers a better chance at providing for the basic needs of themselves and their families.

It’s not about whining or jealousy. It all boils down to how we value people.

Without worker bees performing the real work day in and day out, there would be no huge profits for the fat cats to collect.