It's the afternoon of Thursday, January 5, and the nation's top business leaders have likely already made more money this year than the average Australian will make all year long.

Based on statistics from previous years, the average earnings for 2017 of the chief executives of Australia's 100 biggest listed companies would have passed $81,000 by mid-morning on Thursday, a Fairfax Media analysis reveals.

The analysis uses the latest statistics from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI), released late last year, which put the average take-home pay for an ASX100 chief executive at $5.54 million a year (about $15,000 a day) in the 2015 financial year.

The figure factors in bonuses and shares and works out at 68 times higher than the $81,000 pay packet that the Australian Bureau of Statistics says is an average full-time adult worker's yearly earnings at the moment.