The average salary, at just over $80,000 per year, is the lowest of any state, and the cost of living on the island is quickly catching up to the mainland.

But the one group of Tasmanians that aren't feeling the pinch are the top executives of the state's biggest companies.

Data collected by The Examiner showed the average salary of chief executive officers of the top 14 corporations in the state was $484,000 - over six times the average salary of ordinary full-time workers.

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The top-paid executives in Tasmania didn't come close to the top figures on the mainland, such as Afterpay co-founders Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, who took home more than $100 million each last year.

But none of Tasmania's top executives were hurting.

Taking top spot on the list was former My State Bank CEO, Melos Sulicich, who earned $1.08 million in the year to June 2021, before he resigned in December last year.

His pay during the period included a base salary of $623,077, cash bonuses of $279,000 and performance-based stock option payments worth $156,698.

The state's highest currently employed executive was Mark Ryan, CEO of salmon group Tassal.

He took home $873,568 in the year to June 2021, but that was down from the $1.26 million he made the year before, when he was paid a cash bonus of $472,058.

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Mr Ryan was during the same period granted 177,154 performance rights - financial instruments that can be converted to ordinary Tassal shares in June next year, if certain performance hurdles are met.

The rights, based on the current Tassal stock price of $4.94, would be worth $875,140 if vested now, and are in addition to the salary and cash bonuses.

Although not the highest-paid, the gong for the CEO of the most unusual company on the list has to go to Bess Clark - CEO of Marinus - the project to construct undersea electricity cables across Bass Strait.

Ms Clark was paid $339,000 last year to head a company that, for all practical purposes, exists only on paper.

The Marinus project has yet to reach the stage of final approval, and that could be years into the future.

Dean Winters, Labor spokesman on Energy and Renewables, said her salary didn't surprise him.

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"It's a six year-old project that's effectively achieved nothing so far ... this project is full of consultants, full of inflated salaries but is achieving very little for that money," he said.

Of the top executives of the state's main government-owned corporations, former Hydro Tasmania CEO, Evangelista Albertini, topped the list, with a payout of $593,000 in the year to June 2021. He resigned in September, just a year into his contract.

One of the smallest companies on the list was Pure Foods Tasmania, which owns Tasmanian brands such as the Cashew Creamery, Daly Potato and Woodbridge Smokehouse.

Its CEO, Michael Cooper was paid $277,610 in the year to June 2021 - yet Pure Foods has not made a profit since 2012, and has seen its share price slide since late 2020, according to ASX filings.

Jessica Munday, secretary of Unions Tasmania, the state's peak union body, said the "growing wage disparity" between executives and ordinary workers has concerned her for some time.

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"That gap just seems to be growing and growing, and there are always arguments that we need to pay executives these exorbitant salaries to attract people, but we never apply the same logic to ordinary workers," she said.

A number of public sector unions are considering launching industrial action over pay and resourcing.

They say Tasmania's low salaries compared with those in other states has made it more difficult to attract and retain public sector staff.

Many unions want pay increases above the 5.1 per cent annual rate of inflation, but the government has resisted this.

The Reserve Bank has also warned that these pay demands could spark a wage-price spiral, but Ms Munday rejected that.

"We've seen some try to paint our reasonable demands for wage rises in line with the cost of living as somehow contributing to that wage spiral, and I think profits have boomed and CEO wages have gone up - that is what is contributing to a profit-driven spiral."

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