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On Aug. 6, 2026, the Internal Revenue Service issued updated Frequently Asked Questions concerning the new federal income tax deduction for qualified overtime compensation under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act.
This deduction is only available for tax years 2025 through 2028.
The FAQs supersede the previously released FAQs and provide important clarification concerning what qualifies for the deduction and employers’ payroll and reporting obligations. READ MORE
Shareholder rebellions over executive pay eased across many of the world’s biggest stock markets this year, with opposition falling in Europe, the United States and Japan despite a handful of high-profile revolts.
The move comes as pay and perks continue to dwarf the average worker’s wage, with average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies hitting a record high even excluding a bumper pay plan for Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX. READ MORE
A bigger salary doesn’t always mean a better financial life. Where you live can have an enormous impact on what your paycheck actually buys once housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and taxes enter the equation.
According to MERIC’s first-quarter 2026 Cost of Living Index, many of America’s least expensive states are concentrated in the South and Midwest. A score below 100 indicates costs below the national benchmark, and housing is often where the biggest savings appear. READ MORE
Once you’ve settled into a job, it’s easy to fall into the rhythm of meetings, deadlines, and regular paychecks.
You may not think much about how your income compares to others. But seeing how your salary stacks up by age—and how earnings rise and fall over time, including which group earns the most—can give you a better sense of your financial trajectory. READ MORE
Employers are likely to offer their workers only modest pay hikes in 2027, according to a new estimate.
Salary increases next year are forecast to average 3.5%, including merit raises, cost-of-living adjustments, promotions and other pay increases, Marsh, a professional services firm, found in a survey of 1,000 U.S. organizations. READ MORE
Shareholder rebellions over executive pay eased across many of the world’s biggest stock markets this year, with opposition falling in Europe, the United States and Japan despite a handful of high-profile revolts.
The move comes as pay and perks continue to dwarf the average worker’s wage, with average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies hitting a record high even excluding a bumper pay plan for Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX. READ MORE
Amid strong equity markets, CEO pay soared to record heights, driven by large one-time awards, according to new research from advisory firm, ISS-Corporate. Shareholders had few objections to the largesse.
Median CEO pay for the companies in the S&P 500 index reached $17.5 million (all figures in U.S. dollars) for fiscal 2025, reflecting a 20% cumulative increase in median pay since 2021, the report on executive compensation trends from the latest proxy season indicated. READ MORE
AI has quickly made itself useful across hiring. It can sift through résumés, draft a job description in seconds, and match a role to market benchmarks. For a small company that never had a compensation team, that’s a genuine unlock.
But things get thornier when AI has a say in what the actual salaries that companies pay their employees should be. And that’s the bigger question that founders now have to grapple with—whether they should let AI set the number itself. That pressure is only growing, and this year it found a sharp edge in the law. READ MORE
Navigating your first full-time post-grad job search can feel like solving a puzzle where half the pieces keep changing shape. Between shifting economic priorities, evolving remote-work policies, and expanded pay transparency laws, understanding what you are actually worth in the 2026 job market is essential.
Whether you are evaluating your first job offer, preparing for a campus interview, or setting realistic targets for your fall application cycle, this benchmark guide breaks down current starting salaries across top academic majors, geographic cost adjustments, and total compensation structures. READ MORE
Planning a relocation to the United States? A new study examined how much you would need to earn each year to live comfortably in every state. Nearly half of U.S. states now require an annual salary of more than $100,000 (about 300,000 shekels) for a single adult to live “comfortably,” according to an analysis by fintech company SmartAsset. READ MORE
A newly leaked spreadsheet has revealed just how wild salaries are at one of the most valuable companies on the planet.
Obtained by Business Insider, the spreadsheet compiled voluntarily-disclosed pay rates from some 600 Microsoft employees at various levels of seniority. While the tech giant employs over 220,000 people overall, it still provides a valuable snapshot into the work life at one of the largest tech firms in the game. READ MORE
The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%.
Inflation also outpaced worker pay increases, rising by 25.9%. READ MORE
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) set workplace norms that are still in use almost ninety years later. The FLSA established the 40-hour standard workweek and overtime protections for workers. It guaranteed pay at a rate of 1.5 times the standard hourly wage for work past the 40-hour mark. Overtime protections were designed as a safeguard for workers—to prevent employers from overworking employees and to require firms to pay workers fairly for their labor when they put in extra time on the job. By making long hours more expensive, the overtime premium incentivizes employers to hire more workers and spread the work around.
But as the country’s workforce has shifted over the nearly 90 years since the FLSA was enacted, the FLSA’s overtime rate has not. READ MORE
As housing, grocery, transportation and other essential costs pressure household budgets, earning a six-figure salary no longer guarantees financial comfort in much of the U.S. A single adult now needs at least $80,000 a year to live comfortably in every state, while the threshold exceeds $100,000 in nearly half of states. For a family of four, the income needed to live comfortably is as much as $329,000. READ MORE
It’s hard to find a consensus of opinions, but this might come close: Workers want their wages to go up over time, ideally over and above inflation. These raises are what allow them to not just keep pace with the cost of groceries and rent but afford more—nicer neighborhoods, better computers, more berries. At an economy-wide level, this real wage growth (wage growth after adjusting for inflation) means that as society becomes richer and more productive, living standards improve in the population as a whole. It’s what allows children to grow up to be better off than their parents. READ MORE
Ungoverned hiring, promotion and merit decisions are costing enterprise organizations millions of dollars each year, recent research by Syndio found.
“Pay decisions are some of the highest-stakes calls a company makes, and most are still made one at a time, with no system connecting them back to strategy,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said. “This research quantifies that cost and gives HR and finance leaders a way to calculate their own exposure.” READ MORE
Salary budgets in 2026 are stabilizing as boards and senior leaders move beyond the short-term adjustments of recent years. Inflation remains volatile in many countries, reflecting varied conditions in markets around the world. Recently released data suggest leaders are returning to measured, disciplined salary increases, with fewer signs of reactive or inflation-driven spikes. READ MORE
Few salary negotiations end exactly as employees hope. A request for a raise may be rejected, postponed or met with a counteroffer that forces an employee to rethink their options. While such outcomes can feel disappointing, career advisers say they are often the beginning of a broader conversation about an employee's future within an organization.
The key is resisting the temptation to treat the outcome as purely personal. READ MORE
The adage “love is blind” might not apply when it comes to finances.
Although American workers saw median weekly earnings of $1,251 in the second quarter of 2026, totaling roughly $65,000 per year, many U.S. singles want their ideal partner to earn well above that figure. READ MORE
According to ADP Research, nearly six in 10 workers would rather be paid on a weekly basis than every other week. Employees who received weekly pay reported higher engagement, feel more fairly compensated and are less likely to quit in search for greener pastures. Starbucks, it seems have caught onto this, for its new compensation model will reward all workers across the U.S.
On Monday, Starbucks announced its quarterly bonus program, rightly called “Best of Starbucks Reward,” of up to $300 along with weekly pay, expanded tipping and compensation based on attendance and performance metrics. Rather than rely solely on pay raises, Starbucks is slowly shifting towards a performance-driven compensation model that rewards excellence and consistency. READ MORE
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