You can rank U.S. colleges by subjective, random methodologies. Or, you can rank colleges by what really matters: how much money you'll make after you graduate. [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw on Aug 9, 2009 - 71 comments

The wall street brain drain defense. Executive pay has been capped at 500k a year for companies bailed out by the government. Some argue it will lead to a brain drain on wall street. Some say it won't matter. In any event, can the bankers even live on 500k a year?.
posted by jourman2 on Feb 22, 2009 - 120 comments

Glassdoor: an inside look at companies from those who know them best.
posted by allkindsoftime on Jun 16, 2008 - 25 comments

High School Coaches outearning High School Teachers Texas high school football coaches in Class 5A and 4A schools (that's 950 students or more) earn an average salary of $73,804, while the average salary for teachers in those same schools is about $42,400. But hey, those Texas football teams are pretty darn good!
posted by CameraObscura on Aug 9, 2007 - 180 comments

The wild risks, unexpected niches, and day-in-day-out grind behind making a dollar in New York...for everyone from a drug dealer to Goldman Sachs. The Profit Calculator, New York Magazine article.
posted by nickyskye on Jun 7, 2007 - 14 comments

Do Women and Men Earn Equal Pay in 2007? Are women truly earning 77 cents for every dollar that men earn in the same jobs, as some activists, including restaurant owners in Oregon, claim? Or are women earning 23 cents less on the dollar based on total income because men traditionally spend more time on the workplace during their lives, relocate more often for jobs and accept dangerous jobs that pay more? That's one man's take on it.
posted by CameraObscura on May 18, 2007 - 98 comments

Stateline.org has posted the results of a 2007 survey on the salaries of state governors, complete with neato bar graph. The Governator's paycheck was recently voted up, making CA's the highest at $206,500, yet the Hollywood millionaire gives his back. The governor of Maine makes less than his assistant. Jon Corzine of NJ only makes $1 a year (and pays his own medical bills too). Is it heartening to see the relatively moderate salaries alongside the number of executives giving back or refusing increases? Or is it a testimony to the notion that only the wealthy can afford to serve? Or something else altogether?
posted by pineapple on May 16, 2007 - 24 comments

Pro Football Salaries vs Surgeon Salaries Not to be a wet blanket during Super Bowl week, but it strikes me a little odd that surgeons make about 2 percent of what the top football players earn.
posted by CameraObscura on Jan 31, 2007 - 86 comments

The Harvard University Worklife Wizard , created by an international team of journalists, economists, and statisticians, is Barbara Ehrenreich's wet dream. It's also a fantastic resource that has flown pretty much under everyone's radar. The Worklife Survey drives the constantly-revised, constantly-refined Salary Comparison Tool, which is always hungry for more data about employment from around the world. And when they say they want data from everyone, they mean it-- there's even a VIP Salary Checker that pits the wages of the Yankees against those of the Red Sox. (Plus if you take the survey, you can apparently earn a chance to win a trip to South Africa). Personally, I love the Workplace Horror Stories (and there's a competition there too). I can't look at a nail clipper the same way now.
posted by yellowcandy on Nov 20, 2006 - 26 comments

How much does your State Legislator earn for the privilege of serving the good citizens of your fair state? Last year, state lawmakers in Pennsylvania voted themselves a pay raise, but then, they changed their minds. Constituents were not happy, have not forgotten, and a "non-partisan grassroots organization" was "started as an effort to clean house".
posted by jaronson on Aug 9, 2006 - 23 comments

Dad's salary is skyrocketing - on TV. (list here all averaged by profession and adjusted for inflation) "Today's TV dads average salaries of $195,000 after adjusting for inflation, according to Salary.com."
posted by jonmc on Jul 26, 2005 - 42 comments

Executive Pay-Day Perhaps, if we don't maintain the greatest worker-to-executive salary discrepancy in the world, the terrorists win.
posted by subpixel on May 5, 2003 - 20 comments

Are you paid what you're worth? This little IQ test, asks your salary (in pounds) and calculates whether you are overpaid or underpaid with respect to your intelligence. It's obviously not scientific (the test is not timed), and you can argue about how the ability to do IQ tests correlates with your ability to do a job. I predict that the vast majority here will have a coefficient well over 0. [From the Guardian]
posted by salmacis on Mar 13, 2003 - 60 comments

It's all about shareholder value. Steve Jobs has received tremendous positive press for only accepting one dollar per year as payment for his CEO services at Apple. How does he do it, you ask? Well, he supplements his income by a) being a billionaire, and b) renting out his corporate jet to Apple, at a cost of over 1.2 million dollars, over the past two years. Which is an exceptionally generous rental fee considering that Apple itself paid $90 million for the jet, which it bought for Jobs in May of 2001. This data was disclosed along in the most recent quarterly report in which Apple announced layoffs of 260 employees, none of whom were given a jet.
posted by jonson on Feb 14, 2003 - 13 comments

"Hang in there, help is on the way."

The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., recently asked the Defense Department to lower the 2004 pay raise from its expected 3.7 percent to 2 percent. Daniels also wants future raises tied to inflation, rather than basing boosts on what civilians doing comparable jobs in the private sector might make.

Many of our military families already qualify for welfare and food stamps. Pay raises are out of the question when there's NMD and tax cuts to the wealthy needing funding.
posted by nofundy on Dec 23, 2002 - 7 comments

Do short men get short-changed? Any real life experiences to back up or refute this study? I found this very interesting: "If a teenage sense of social exclusion influences future earnings, it may have great implications for youngsters from minority groups."
posted by bittennails on Apr 30, 2002 - 65 comments

It's easy to think of lawyers as greedy, overpaid blood-sucking pigs. But do we have any clue what lawyers earn? Yes we do, thanks to American Lawyer Media's (via law.com) annual roundup of lawyer compensation. Not all of which is surprising. For example, partners at the top corporate firms like Wachtell Lipton, or Cravath, Swaine & Moore or Davis Polk each averaged millions in 2001 ($3,285,000, $2,245,000 and $1,740,000, respectively). Even piddly little first year associates at those firms got $125,000 to start. (We're talking 24-year-old law school grads with precisely zero professional experience and know-how. Zero.) But most newbie lawyers don't win those jobs. Also difficult to land are entry-level positions at district attorneys' offices, but they're not nearly as lucrative. A junior Manhattan D.A. earned $45,000 last year (up from $42,000 in 2000). But locking up criminals beats toiling for civil rights at a not-for-profit like the New York Civil Liberties Union, which paid entry-level lawyers only $35,000 last year. Over all, best off are lawyers who work for big companies. Top counsel at IBM last year earned a measly $506,000 in cash (salary & bonus), but throw in stocks & options and his compensation totaled $7,795,613. Compared to that, you have to worry about the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court whose family in 2001 had to struggle along on $192,600.
posted by jellybuzz on Feb 28, 2002 - 36 comments

Global women are planning a general strike on March 8, 2001, in protest of pay inequity.
posted by tamim on Jan 26, 2001 - 17 comments

The gender gap : do women make less wages due to discrimination, or is it their own choice? Or a combination?
posted by owillis on Dec 13, 2000 - 3 comments

Tex. Rangers buy shortstop Rodriguez for $252 million... yikes!! That's way too much money for baseball franchises to be spending, or is it? [via usr/bin/girl]
posted by Cavatica on Dec 12, 2000 - 10 comments