Tag: Wages and Salaries

In Thailand, Defamation Lawsuits Can Make Free Speech Costly

The Thai activist, Sutharee Wannasiri, knew the poultry company had violated labor laws. She went on Twitter in 2017 to share a video containing an interview with an employee who said he had to work day and night with no day off. The poultry company hit back, suing Ms. Sutharee for defamation and libel. Though […]

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Hollywood Directors Reach Deal With Studios as Writers’ Strike Continues

The union that represents thousands of movie and television directors reached a tentative agreement with the Hollywood studios on a three-year contract early Sunday morning, a deal that ensures labor peace with one major guild as the writers’ strike enters its sixth week. The Directors Guild of America announced in a statement overnight that it […]

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U.S. Job Growth Remains Strong Despite Economic Clouds

American employers added an unanticipated barrage of workers in May, reaffirming the labor market’s vigor. Defying expectations of a slowdown, payrolls grew by 339,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said on Friday. The increase, the largest since January, suggested that the job market was still piping hot despite a swirl of economic […]

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Has ‘Gig Work’ Become a Dirty Word?

When more than 11,000 film and television writers in the Writers Guild of America union went on strike this month, they called out deteriorating working conditions, criticized unfair pay and said they worried about losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. One of their demands stood out: Hollywood writers wanted studios to guarantee them weeks of […]

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How Greenwood, Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’, Grew a Thriving Economy

When W.E.B. Du Bois visited the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Okla., in early 1921, he, like so many others, was impressed by what he found. The famed intellectual had been on the road for weeks on a Southern lecture tour. In his travel diary, he wrote of brutal lynchings and brutalization that were as old […]

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How Greenwood, Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’, Grew a Thriving Economy

When W.E.B. Du Bois visited the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Okla., in early 1921, he, like so many others, was impressed by what he found. The famed intellectual had been on the road for weeks on a Southern lecture tour. In his travel diary, he wrote of brutal lynchings and brutalization that were as old […]

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How the Employee Retention Tax Credit Became a Magnet for Fraud

In early February, federal prosecutors in Utah accused Zachary Bassett and Mason Warr of cheating the United States government out of millions of dollars. The accounting firm they operated had submitted more than 1,000 fraudulent tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of businesses trying to claim pandemic-era stimulus funds, the prosecutors said. […]

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German Economy Slipped Into Recession in First Quarter

Why It Matters: Exports, a big driver of the economy, are down. Germany is Europe’s largest economy and its health directly affects the health of the 20-member eurozone and the wider European Union, the world’s third-largest economy, after the United States and China, in terms of output and purchasing power, according to the World Bank. […]

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Brittney Griner Is Creating a New Normal, for Herself and the W.N.B.A.

PHOENIX — Brittney Griner embarked on a four-day itinerary that would disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm. First came the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, where she was decked out in a sharp, black suit that Saturday night. President Biden pointed to her in the audience and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see […]

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The Same Work but a Lot Less Pay for Women. Welcome to Tennis in 2023.

The best tennis players in the world descend this week on Rome, where men and women will play in the same best-of-three-sets format, on the same courts and in the same tournament, which sells one same-price ticket for both men’s matches and women’s matches. There is one massive difference between the two competitions, however: Men […]

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Goldman Sachs to Pay $215 Million to Settle Gender Bias Suit

Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the bank of systematically discriminating against thousands of female employees. The money will be divided among about 2,800 women, and the bank agreed to change some of its practices. The individual payout amount itself is less than it […]

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A Brain Drain Is Hurting the F.D.I.C., a Key Banking Regulator

For the last three years, Hannah Johnson worked on a New York team of bank examiners at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, assessing the health of banks in the region and looking for potential red flags. In March, Ms. Johnson left the F.D.I.C. and took a job at a bank that offered her a 20 […]

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Bank Stocks Bounce as Investors Rethink Economic Outlook

A group of regional bank stocks that came under severe pressure on Thursday, stoking fears of a spiraling banking crisis, surged on Friday, at least partially alleviating those worries. The rebound came as the market was also bolstered by data on hiring deemed strong enough to soften concerns about a recession without prompting the Federal […]

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Wages Grow Steadily, Defying Fed’s Hopes as it Fights Inflation

Wage growth ticked up in April, good news for American workers but bad news for officials at the Federal Reserve, who have been hoping to see a steady moderation in pay gains as they try to wrestle inflation back under control. Average hourly earnings climbed by 4.4 percent in the year through April. That compared […]

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Wages climb rapidly, defying the Fed’s hopes for a slowdown.

Wage growth picked up in April, good news for American workers but bad news for officials at the Federal Reserve, who have been hoping to see a steady moderation in pay gains as they try to wrestle inflation back under control. Average hourly earnings climbed by 4.4 percent in the year through April. That compared […]

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Recession Fears Abound, but Fed Chair Bets on Soft Landing

The Federal Reserve’s push to slow the economy and bring inflation under control is often compared to an airplane descent, one that could end in a soft landing, a bumpy one or an outright crash. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, is betting on something more akin to the Miracle on the Hudson: a touchdown […]

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On Inflation, Wages and Tough-Guy Economics

Some economics textbooks used to define their subject as the “science of scarcity.” Maybe some still do. That’s actually quite wrong: Some of the most useful economics involves telling people that they need not settle for less — for example, that we don’t simply have to accept recessions as a fact of life, that we […]

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Wages and Prices Slow Unevenly, Reflecting ‘Rocky and Bumpy’ Economy

Inflation isn’t as high as it was last year. The job market isn’t as hot. The economy is slowing down. But none of this is happening as quickly or as smoothly as Federal Reserve officials would like. The latest evidence came on Friday, when a set of government reports painted a picture of an economy […]

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Wages Continue to Grow, Good for Workers but a Worry for the Fed

Wage growth remained strong in early 2023 — good news for workers trying to keep up with the rising cost of living, but a likely source of concern for Federal Reserve officials as they try to tamp down inflation without causing a recession. Wages and salaries for private-sector U.S. workers were up 5.1 percent in […]

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Wages and Prices Could Show a Cool-Down Before a Fed Meeting

Government data on Friday will provide one final update on inflation, spending and wages before the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision next week. Forecasters expect data from the Labor Department to show that a key measure of wages and salaries increased about 4.6 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. While that would […]

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A Grim Anniversary for Survivors of the Rana Plaza Disaster

Shahida Begum said that when the floor fell out beneath her, she had just turned to ask colleagues why the lights had gone out. Kabir Mollah said he was inspecting garments when a friend called his cellphone, screaming that the building was on a perilous tilt. Nazma Begum said she had washed her long black […]

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The True Cost of a $12 T-Shirt

Across Malaysia and other garment-producing countries we investigated, workers described being held hostage in the same trap: debt bondage after paying exorbitant recruitment fees to unscrupulous recruiters. The apparel industry suffers from what economists call an “agency problem.” Brands rely on auditors to uncover violations in factories — then often require the factories to pay […]

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Seeking to Calm Unrest, Macron Calls for a ‘New Pact of Life and Work’

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron, straining for a tone of reconciliation after months of bitter conflict over his plan to raise the retirement age in France, expressed regret for the first time that a consensus was not reached and appealed for a new “national élan” based on “calm, unity, ambition and action.” In a 13-minute […]

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Saving for a Down Payment and Retirement: What to Know

Jade Akintola and Brandon Thomas Brown are balancing three competing financial priorities — preparing for the birth of their first child, saving up for a down payment on their first home and contributing to their retirement fund. Something, they decided, had to give, so in the short term, that thing was their retirement savings. “At […]

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Unemployment Is Low. Inflation Is Falling. But What Comes Next?

There are two starkly different ways of looking at the U.S. economy right now: what the data says has happened in the past few months, and what history warns could happen next. Most of the recent data suggests that the economy is strong. The job market is, incredibly, better today than it was in February […]

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Ban Noncompetes, and Set Millions of Americans Free

If you have a steady job in the United States, there’s a good chance you are bound by an employment contract that sets the terms of your work, including hours, salary and benefits. But the contract’s reach may not be limited to that job. It may also contain language that puts restrictions on your life […]

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WNBA Draft: Aliyah Boston Goes No. 1 to Indiana Fever

When Aliyah Boston was 12 years old, she took a 1,700-mile journey with her sister to their aunt’s home in Massachusetts from the Virgin Islands, hoping to become a good enough basketball player to go to college for free and maybe one day make it to the W.N.B.A. Boston fulfilled that dream on Monday night […]

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The Meaning of an Awesome Employment Report

Americans, they said, just don’t want to work. Socialism has made them lazy. They’d rather play video games. They don’t have the skills required by a 21st-century economy. High unemployment is “structural” and can’t be solved with monetary and fiscal stimulus. All of these stories received wide circulation during the long employment slump that followed […]

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Tipping Confusion

For delivery drivers, every shift is a game of gig economy roulette: Will customers tip? And if they do, how much? The answers determine their livelihoods. “It’s like gambling,” Brantley Bush, an Uber Eats driver, told my colleague Kellen Browning, a technology reporter. Kellen rode along with drivers in wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods, pulling up […]

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U.S. Job Growth Eases, but Extends Its Streak

The U.S. economy generated hearty job growth in March, but at a slowing rate that appeared to reflect the toll of steadily rising interest rates. Employers added 236,000 jobs in the month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, down from an average of 334,000 jobs added over the prior six […]

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Noncompete Clauses Get Tighter, and TV Newsrooms Feel the Grip

Beth Johnson, a television talent agent, says she had to move from exclusively representing clients to more training and consulting, since newsroom employees were no longer able to move around enough to negotiate significant pay raises. The rapid consolidation in local news, with major companies like Nexstar and Sinclair buying out smaller ownership groups, has […]

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