Wages | featured news

Labour unrest in South Africa's platinum belt spread on Wednesday, raising concerns that anger over low wages and poor living conditions could generate fresh violence after 34 striking miners were shot dead by police last week.

The advice I was given by Katie Donovan, an equal pay coach and advocate, is to research the salaries in your field, and then ask for 30 percent more than the average (that’s what the men are making).

Just hearing the word Unicor is enough to make Kurt Wilson see red. Unicor is a government-run enterprise that employs over 13,000 inmates -- at wages as low as 23 cents an hour -- to make goods for the Pentagon and other federal agencies. With some exceptions, Unicor gets first dibs on federal contracts over private companies as long as its bid is comparable in price, quantity and delivery. In other words: If Unicor wants a contract, it gets it.

High school dropouts’ earnings have fallen 66 percent since 1969, and people with some college – the median level of education in the US – have seen earnings fall by a third. Reasonable people can disagree about what caused this massive decline and what should be done to fix it. But it’s a major crisis and people like Conard who deny its existence are just wrong.

A salary is one of the most compelling factors for individuals deciding on a career path, a degree or even where to live — because some parts of the U.S. pay higher wages, on average, for the same position.

Consumer spending was flat in May for the first time in five months as Americans eased off on vehicle purchases amid tepid wage growth, but subsiding inflation pressures should keep demand supported.

Workers at a Chinese factory owned by Foxconn, Apple Inc's main manufacturer, threatened to jump off the roof of a building in a protest over wages just a month after the two firms announced a landmark agreement on improving working conditions.

Now that everyone’s had a good moan about Apple paying higher than average Chinese wages to the Chinese workers who assemble its products it seems that it is Facebook’s turn to be attacked for paying what are, in the parts of the world where they’re paid, pretty good wages.

David Frias works two minimum-wage jobs to squeak by in one of the most expensive cities in America. Come New Year's Day, he'll have a few more coins in his pocket as San Francisco makes history by becoming the first city in the nation to scale a $10 minimum wage. The city's hourly wage for its lowest-paid workers will hit $10.24, more than $2 above the California minimum wage and nearly $3 more than the working wage set by the federal government.

The cost of health insurance continues to climb for U.S. companies and workers, with annual family premiums this year growing at a pace triple that of 2010 and outpacing wage increases, according to a survey.