Companies Are Spending On AI Instead Of Compensation -- 5 Ways To Still Get A Raise

54% of companies have reduced or will reduce employee compensation to free up capital for AI spending in 2026, according to a survey of 866 US business leaders conducted by Resume Builder. Various forms of compensation are on the cutting board – bonuses, equity, raises, benefits, even base salaries. However, 71% of survey respondents will give performance-based raises tied to individual results.

That last finding is key: if you’re looking to make more money, you still can. What companies are doing in general or on average doesn’t necessarily apply to you as an individual. READ MORE

Renters across America are catching a break, but not in NYC, where a studio takes a $153K salary

Living alone in New York City still requires a very Carrie Bradshaw-sized fantasy budget — or, more realistically, a six-figure salary.

A solo renter in New York would need to earn $153,600 a year before taxes to comfortably afford the city’s typical studio, according to The Economist’s latest “Carrie Bradshaw Index,” named for the “Sex and the City” heroine famous for living alone in Manhattan on a columnist’s salary.

The typical studio payment in New York is $3,840 a month, according to the index, which assumes renters should spend no more than 30% of their gross income on housing. READ MORE

Average Salary by Age: How Earnings Change and When Pay Peaks Throughout Your Career

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

S&P 500 CEO pay hits $17.5M as equity awards reshape executive compensation

Median CEO pay at S&P 500 companies reached $17.5 million in 2026, up 6% from the prior year and 63% higher than the $10.7 million recorded in 2017, according to a new report by The Conference Board.

The report, created with compensation consulting firm FW Cook and ESG data analytics firm ESGAUGE, found that across the broader Russell 3000, the median CEO pay rose 7% to $7.1 million. READ MORE

When My Coworkers and I Realized We Were Being Underpaid, We Fought for a Pay Bump and Won

It's not like I walked in and wrote a number on a napkin and slid it across the table. It's actually a bit more nuanced than that. I work in sports media, and there was a pay disparity that was uncovered at our company and made public to some employees unintentionally. At first, I just felt rage. We're talking about a life-changing amount of money. Then I realized there was an opportunity to do something about it.

I became active in creating an employee resource group for Black employees. The goal was to mobilize our colleagues and establish clear guidelines for things like salaries, promotions, and annual reviews. Once we did that, we presented to leadership and even the owner—and we set out to get some answers. READ MORE

Wage suppression in 10 charts

Wages for typical workers have been largely suppressed since the 1970s. The 10 charts below tell that story.

In the following 10 charts, we outline the historical context of workers’ wage trajectories since the 1970s. For most of those years, wages for the majority of workers were essentially stagnant. Two periods, the late 1990s and the last decade, saw decent wage growth, which kept cumulative wage growth since 1979 well above zero. But those years were the exception, not the norm. More importantly, even with those two periods, wages for typical workers lagged far behind productivity growth—meaning there was the potential for wages to rise far faster than they did. Had workers’ wages kept up with productivity, their annual earnings would have been roughly $30,000 higher. READ MORE

DoorDash Agrees to $131.5 Million Settlement for Shortchanging Workers

DoorDash has agreed to pay $131.5 million in a settlement with New York City that allows closer monitoring of its payment methods after it underpaid or failed to pay 264,000 delivery workers.

The action is the latest effort spanning three mayoral administrations to crack down on delivery companies that city officials and others have long accused of mistreating workers who are considered independent contractors. READ MORE

New York’s Proposed Wage Payment Integrity Act: What Employers Should Be Doing Now

New York lawmakers have passed Senate Bill 2236-A, known as the “Wage Payment Integrity Act” (the “Act”), which would significantly expand what qualifies as protected “wages” under the New York Labor Law (“NYLL”) and would give employees enhanced tools to recover unpaid compensation. The Act would modify NYLL §§ 190, 195, and 198-c to widen the statutory meaning of “wages,” establish a rigorous disclosure standard for any compensation an employer wishes to classify as purely discretionary, introduce an evidentiary presumption against employers where an employer fails to provide written employment terms, and clarify civil remedies available to higher-paid employees. Should the Act become law, any employee compensation not expressly reserved to the employer’s sole and absolute discretion could fall within the statutory definition of wages, representing a major shift that could capture bonuses historically treated as discretionary and outside the scope of the Act (e.g., those linked to team performance, departmental objectives, or company-wide results). READ MORE

Falling behind? State and local government employee compensation since the Great Recession

New research by Byron Lutz and David Ratner of the Federal Reserve Board and Louise Sheiner of the Hutchins Center on compensation of state and local government employees goes beyond wages to put a dollar value on the benefits that standard compensation metrics mismeasure or leave out entirely: defined benefit pensions, retiree health care, and job security. They find that compensation of state and local workers has fallen substantially relative to comparable private sector workers since the Great Recession. READ MORE

Employee demands 10% raise because he's bilingual, even though his second language is Welsh: 'The manager then told me that the policy meant Spanish'

It's a perk for anyone to be bilingual, but in this workplace environment, it served as justification for a raise.

That's because employees at this company were often required to take work trips to other offices and sites where colleagues and clients did not necessarily speak English. Recently, in order to attract more bilingual employees to the company (and in order to reward current employees who often have to be the point people in these communications), a new policy was enforced where bilingual employees would be granted a 10% raise. Given that these employees often had to take the reins for a lot of these conversations with non-English-speaking clients, the policy seemed fair enough. READ MORE

AI Is Hollowing Out Software Jobs — But Paying Survivors a Fortune

An Indeed Hiring Lab report published last week quantified what software workers have felt for two years: the people still getting hired earn far more, and there are far fewer of them. Advertised pay in the most AI-exposed US occupations has climbed roughly 46% since the start of 2021, compared with 25% for the least-exposed jobs, including nursing, food prep, and cleaning. The gap started widening in 2024 and continues now. READ MORE

Congratulations, you're a manager now! But there's no promotion — or a raise

You entered your profession because you wanted to teach, code, write, create, or design. But thanks to AI — and the immense pressure to use it — you now spend less time practicing your craft and more time managing the technology that's doing the work you wanted to do.

For many professionals, that means supervising agents: tools designed to perform tasks autonomously but that, in practice, require workers to set expectations, delegate assignments, evaluate performance, demand revisions, and intervene when things go wrong. Others manage a steady pipeline of AI-generated work, reviewing the output and taking responsibility for what ultimately ships. READ MORE

Jobs that earn six figures without going to college (and why they are rare)

As college costs and student debt have Americans doubting the value of higher education, there's growing interest in high-paying jobs that don't require a degree - and in public policy supporting training for them. But six-figure jobs that skip a bachelor's degree do require more than a high school diploma and remain rare, according to an analysis released Monday by Niche, a higher education platform.

The highest salaries for workers without a bachelor's degree are typically in jobs gated by federal certification or specialized training, including commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, elevator installers and nuclear reactor operators, the study shows. READ MORE

Amid layoff fears, 54% of workers would take a pay cut for greater security

With layoff headlines abounding, it's no wonder workers feel squeamish. And they're increasingly willing to vote with their feet in order to find a job where they feel secure.

According to new research from Monster, 54% of the more than 1,000 U.S. workers surveyed would take a pay cut at a different employer in exchange for more stability. And many are open to a substantial cut: Twenty-eight percent would accept a reduction of at least 5%, while 11% would be OK with a more than 10% cut. READ MORE

Stablecoin salaries can leave workers paying to access their wages

Every paycheck eventually has to pay for something: rent, groceries, transport, or bills.

Stablecoins can move between wallets in seconds. But that does not mean an employee can spend the money immediately. They may still need to convert the stablecoins into local currency, move the money to a bank account, and pay fees along the way.

That's becoming more important as companies offer stablecoin payroll. READ MORE

Which Creative College Degrees Offer the Highest Salaries and Strongest Job Prospects?

Do you want to pursue a creative bachelor’s degree while still aiming for a higher salary? Several creative majors earn more than the typical college graduate.

The highest-earning creative major, advertising and public relations, pays a median of about $92,000 mid-career, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That beats the $80,236 median for workers with a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent analysis. READ MORE

The value of a college degree can’t be measured by salary alone

Ask whether college is worth the cost, and the conversation will quickly turn to jobs. Will graduates find employment? How much will they earn? Will their salaries justify what they spent or borrowed to attend?

These are necessary questions. College is expensive, and students deserve honest information about whether a degree will improve their economic circumstances. Institutions should be accountable for helping students graduate and preparing them for meaningful work. But in our effort to prove that college pays, we have begun to treat earnings as though they are the only return that matters. READ MORE

The gender wage gap improved in 2025, unless you’re a Black woman

This week, new data from the Census Bureau revealed that women working full-time, year-round earned 83.9 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2025, up from 80.6 cents in 2024. This means women’s median earnings increased 3.2% over the year while men’s remained relatively the same, narrowing the gender wage gap by more than three cents in a single year. READ MORE

OpenAI is offering engineers up to $500,000 in salary as it pushes into robotics

OpenAI is offering robotics engineers up to half a million dollars a year in base salaries as it builds out its robotics efforts.

The company has 27 robotics jobs listed on its careers page, up from 11 in May, spanning hardware, software, data collection, and prototyping, according to Business Insider's review. Publicly advertised base salaries range from $177,000 to half a million dollars a year, before equity. READ MORE