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A federal appeals court has handed a software company a partial win after the NLRB ruled it illegally fired four engineers over a salary spreadsheet.
The D.C. Circuit on May 26, 2026 upheld the National Labor Relations Board's finding that Vermont Information Processing illegally fired Christopher Bendel, the engineer who created the spreadsheet. But it vacated the Board's findings as to three of his coworkers and sent those cases back for further proceedings. READ MORE
Virginia recently enacted a pay transparency law requiring employers to include a pay range in all job postings and prohibiting employers from seeking the salary history of a prospective employee. This is Virginia’s third attempt at passing pay transparency and salary history legislation; however, the previous two efforts in 2024 and 2025 were vetoed by then-Governor Glenn Youngkin (R). Under the new law, most Virginia employers will be required to disclose a pay range in their job postings and will be prohibited from asking prospective employees their salary history or using their salary history in determining the employee’s pay. The law will go into effect on July 1, 2026, and applies broadly to any individual or legal entity which employs one or more individuals. READ MORE
Not long ago, organizations wooed candidates with promises of exponential growth. They showered candidates with lavish signing bonuses and endless job growth. According to a ZipRecruiter New Hires survey, this frenzy has quieted to make way for a shift in what candidates really want.
Candidates no longer chase just a dream role. Instead, they seek higher job satisfaction along with stability. The flashy allure of a disruptive startup no longer commands the same devotion. Workers want a safe harbor from sudden layoffs and shifting corporate whims. READ MORE
The amount you receive in Social Security is determined by four factors (assuming you qualify): Your work history, your earnings history, the year you were born and the age at which you first claim benefits.
Some of these things – especially earnings and work history – are intertwined. To calculate your monthly benefit, the Social Security Administration takes your 35-highest earning years and then adjusts for inflation. Higher lifetime earnings mean you receive higher Social Security benefits. READ MORE
Salaried workers’ pay growth has outpaced gains among hourly earners in the past year, with advertised wages declining outright among hourly workers in IT, software development, and other STEM fields, according to a new analysis from the Indeed Hiring Lab.
The analysis drew on pay information across millions of job postings from the beginning of 2025 through early 2026, finding that posted wages for salaried roles grew 2.9% while advertised pay for their hourly counterparts rose only 1.7%. READ MORE
The upward trajectory of CEO compensation moderated in 2025 amid ongoing economic uncertainty. The median total compensation* for S&P 500 chief executives reached $17.7 million in 2025, representing a 5.9% increase from the previous year. While pay continues to climb, this single-digit uptick marks the smallest annual growth rate since 2022, when median pay grew by just 0.9%. Last year’s study recorded a 9.7% increase, in line with the typical annual change in CEO compensation.
For the 16th year, Equilar and the Associated Press have partnered to analyze CEO compensation across the S&P 500. This annual study tracks pay trends for CEOs who have led their companies for at least two consecutive fiscal years. To be included in the 2026 study, companies must have filed their proxy statements between January 1 and April 30, 2026 READ MORE
Executive compensation is rarely easy, but it feels meaningfully different today. Compensation committees are operating with narrower margins for error amid more frequent and less predictable volatility. Strategic pivots unfold in compressed timeframes. Performance patterns are uneven. Market sentiment changes rapidly. Leadership transitions occur against backdrops that would have seemed implausible a decade ago.
At the same time, scrutiny is expanding beyond pay outcomes and alignment with common financial measures to the broader context. Investors, proxy advisors, employees and regulators are paying closer attention to how credibly boards explain the judgments underlying their decisions, not just mathematical outcomes. In this environment, two issues increasingly appear on committee agendas: how incentives support innovation without diluting accountability and how compensation reflects rapidly evolving risks that are less visible and harder to quantify. READ MORE
State Farm has told its 19,000 agents it is making significant changes to the compensation and benefits package for agents. Several agents have said this will substantially reduce their earnings.
The Bloomington-based company is also cutting benefits for retired insurance agents. State Farm briefly mentioned the changes last month at the agency convention and sent a pre-recorded video and follow-up email Monday. READ MORE
In January, SpaceX granted Elon Musk, its founder and chief executive, a pay package that eventually totaled 1.3 billion restricted shares. The award was contingent on the rocket company’s establishing a colony on Mars with one million inhabitants and launching high-powered data centers into space. READ MORE
Employers in the U.S. appear to have delivered on their compensation promises in 2026, according to new data from Mercer. However, a deeper look shows that a narrative about a wave of across-the-board pay increases doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
The mean merit increase paid out this spring was 3.1%, just below the 3.2% employers projected back in October 2025, according to Mercer’s new QuickPulse US Compensation Planning Survey, which drew responses from 756 organizations. Average total increases, which include all pay adjustments beyond merit, came in at 3.4%, also one-tenth of a point below the fall forecast. READ MORE
The typical CEO compensation package rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, as company boards rewarded their top executives for bigger profits and higher stock prices, and gave them incentives to stick around and make even more money for shareholders.
The median employee at companies in the S&P 500 earned $89,744, reflecting a 4.7% increase year over year. While that gain outpaced the rate of inflation in 2025, many workers were still feeling pinched by the accumulation of higher prices over the past few years and had to cut corners to make ends meet and run up credit card debt to pay for everyday necessities. READ MORE
Hotel maids in NYC already out-earn rookie cops, firefighters and even teachers with master’s degrees — and they just got a raise.
The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing 22,000 city hotel workers, ratified the new contract Thursday that will bring housekeepers to $77,113 on July 1 with $110,000 in salary alone in the sixth year. READ MORE
CEO pay across the banking sector climbed sharply in 2024, with nearly every chief executive in a new Compensation Advisory Partners analysis receiving higher total compensation than the year before, as boards rewarded stronger earnings, rebounding bonuses and improved shareholder returns following the regional banking turmoil of 2023.
Compensation Advisory Partners examined pay at 54 large and regional banks and found all but four CEOs received increases in total direct compensation in 2024. Among regional banks with between $10 billion and $50 billion in assets, average CEO pay jumped 24.1%, nearly double the increase seen at larger institutions, according to CAP data cited by American Banker. READ MORE
Connecticut’s enactment of H.B. 5003 reflects a continuing nationwide trend toward greater pay transparency and enhanced employee protections concerning compensation. While building on the state’s existing statutory framework, the amendments materially expand both the scope and timing of employer disclosure obligations, particularly in the recruiting and hiring context.
These changes are likely to have significant operational implications for employers, particularly those with multistate workforces, as Connecticut’s requirements now more closely align with (and in some respects expand upon) similar laws in jurisdictions such as New York and New Jersey. READ MORE
It pays to be a doctor in America, especially as confidence in the U.S. economy is waning.
Physicians and surgeons dominate the nation’s highest-paying occupations, according to new federal wage estimates for more than 800 jobs in the U.S. READ MORE
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is continuing his foray into California politics with a newly reported donation to a group fighting against a proposed tax in San Francisco that would hit companies with high-paid executives in the tech hub.
A political contribution filing submitted on Wednesday revealed that Brin donated $500,000 to a group that's opposing San Francisco Measure D, which will appear on voters' ballots on June 2. READ MORE
Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, by some estimates the world's fourth-wealthiest person, has turned the tables on the "tax the rich" effort. He is advocating for eliminating federal income taxes for lower-income Americans.
In an interview on Wednesday with CNBC, Bezos reflected on his upbringing as the son of a Cuban immigrant and a teenage mother, who "brought themselves up" during hard times. READ MORE
Executive Compensation Disclosure. non-accelerated filers would be entitled to provide significantly scaled executive compensation disclosure, including: disclosure for only three (instead of five) named executive officers; only two years (instead of three years) of summary compensation table information; and exemptions from the requirement to provide a Compensation Discussion and Analysis, pay ratio disclosure, pay versus performance disclosure, and several executive compensation tables (including grants of plan-based awards, pension benefits, option exercises and stock vested, and nonqualified deferred compensation tables). READ MORE
Large US-headquartered companies are becoming less explicit about linking executive pay to sustainability goals, Sustainable Views’ analysis of proxy filings reveals.
As businesses rushed to demonstrate their sustainability credentials in the early 2020s, many began making a proportion of executive pay conditional on ESG-related targets or metrics. By 2024, roughly three-quarters of S&P 500 companies embedded some type of environmental, social and governance performance into their executive compensation plans — though approaches have always varied. READ MORE