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Starting base salaries for 2026 law school grads are rising at large U.S. firms after a two-year lull as the bar’s been raised to $235,000.
It comes as more clout is wielded by the biggest players as a newly released NALP report on employment and pay for the class of 2025 revealed that roughly 20% of those who are employed work at firms with at least 500 lawyers. 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
Friday’s release of monthly labor data is expected to show that average hourly earnings in July increased by 3.5% relative to this time last year—which is in line with the 3.5% increase in the employment cost index (ECI) in the second quarter.
However, the ECI includes both wages and benefits, which offers a more complete look at the cost of labor for U.S. employers. READ MORE
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is, reportedly, concerned that new hires are only interested in money and not the company’s mission.
Axios included this information from a “source familiar” in a discussion about talent wars in the AI space.
The concern is laughable because people are always primarily motivated by money. The problem is that people talk about values and flexibility and meaningfulness in interviews precisely because hiring managers want to hire someone who wants “this” job and not “a” job. And now, apparently, CEOs have started to believe that it is truly a company’s mission that matters. 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
When a basketball legend recently joined the Philadelphia 76ers, he accepted the biggest-ever pay cut in NBA history.
Sports fans in Philadelphia rejoiced last week when it was announced that LeBron James was joining the city’s 76ers, a move that has an interesting footnote for HR leaders. READ MORE
As businesses revise their rewards strategies in response to a challenging economy and emerging technology, many struggle to effectively communicate with employees.
Only 16% of organizations are confident that their managers can explain AI-related pay and work changes to employees, the latest Korn Ferry Global Rewards Pulse Survey found. Just 43 percent agree that managers understand reward strategy well enough to communicate it, and fewer than one-third say managers can effectively explain pay decisions at all. READ MORE
Missouri residents are voting on Tuesday on whether to phase out state income tax and allow lawmakers to expand sales taxes, one of several ballots this year that will help shape a growing divide in red-state and blue-state income-tax policy.
Republican-led states have been racing each other to cut or eliminate individual income tax, while some blue states are attempting to raise income tax on the wealthiest residents—usually on annual income over $1 million. READ MORE
As a Detroit-based apprentice electrician, Tyler Shelton usually spends his days climbing into manholes to repair cables and other electrical equipment. Recently, though, his employer has begun diverting crews to a massive new data center rising about an hour outside the city.
“Everybody wants that money,” Shelton said in a recent interview with The New York Times. The jobs pay well, but they are also draining the workforce from regular assignments, he said. As more workers head to data centers, Shelton’s crew is left trying to cover the same volume of maintenance and repair work with fewer hands. READ MORE
The most valuable workers in technology cannot be kept, whatever the price. That is the uncomfortable admission running through the AI industry this week, as elite researchers keep hopping between labs that have offered them almost everything money can buy.
The trigger was a single line in an Axios report on the talent wars. A source said Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, has grown worried that new hires are joining for the money rather than the mission. The internet did the rest. READ MORE
More companies are moving away from broad "peanut butter"-style pay raises for workers in favor of merit-based and other kinds of compensation sweeteners for top employees, according to new insights from Payscale. READ MORE
Pay transparency has become one of the defining workplace trends of recent years, with lawmakers and employers increasingly embracing salary disclosure as a tool to promote fairness, strengthen employer brands, and help candidates make more informed career decisions. But while few dispute the value of transparency, new research suggests that how organizations present salary information may be just as important as whether they disclose it at all.
A new study from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations finds that broad salary ranges in job postings may unintentionally discourage women from applying for positions and influence how they negotiate compensation, potentially undermining one of the primary goals of pay transparency laws. 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
When I got my first job in tech, I didn’t know negotiation was even on the table. The recruiter asked what salary I wanted, and I gave a number below the bottom of their range. They came back with the lowest number in their band—still more than I had asked for—and I was thrilled. I had no idea I’d left money on a table I couldn’t see.
Then I started teaching at a Bay Area coding bootcamp in the evenings. A coworker mentioned what he made and it was nearly double my salary for roughly the same work. My jaw dropped. READ MORE
Once you’ve settled into a job, it’s easy to fall into the rhythm of meetings, deadlines, and regular paychecks without thinking 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
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 college majors pay better after graduation than computer engineering.
The major also shows why more high school graduates are questioning whether a bachelor’s degree is worth it: computer engineers earn the highest early-career median wage of any major, $90,000, but they also face an unemployment rate of 7.8%, one of the highest the Federal Reserve Bank of New York tracks. READ MORE
A quarter of Americans believe their financial situation has stopped them from finding “true love,” according to new research.
That was revealed in a new survey of 2,000 general population Americans, which examined the intersection of finances, dating and finding love.
Younger respondents were more likely to believe their finances have prevented them from finding “true love,” with 40% of Gen Z admitting this, compared to just 11% of baby boomers. 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
George Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, debuted in Porgy and Bess in 1935. The song playfully questioned whether accepted truths were, in fact, true at all.
Regular column readers know that we often say the same thing about employment contracts. What appears to be clear on paper frequently turns out to be legally unenforceable. READ MORE
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